(A/N: Wow! Next chapter up already! Whoop whoop! Ok, I know it's taken a bit more time than I promised, but I absolutely swear it wasn't my fault - varsity work caught up with me and, unfortunately, things do need to happen in order. BUT, here it is! Lots of questions answered! Oh, and this is especially for TemperedRose and AccioDrampires - thank you for your reviews! And to everyone else who reads my story or gives reviews - you guys are Awesome! Wow I'm in a good mood today! WonderWhiteRabbit hopping off)

In the Head of the Snake

Chapter 9: Inclinations

Snape's mind was still reeling. He couldn't get the memory out of his head. He felt like not even a hundred Pensieves could dispel the sheer thought of that moment in time. Ginny, after removing her lips from his, had said, "Tomorrow night, then," and left Snape, for the first time in a long time, utterly speechless.

Now he was sitting in his special room, lying on his special bed and feeling, if anything, completely special – and hating himself for it. A teenage girl had just kissed him. Out of nowhere. For no particular reason that he could fathom. And then, proceeded to make a date with him.

Was he right in assuming that? When she said, "Tomorrow night, then," she did mean that she wanted to see him again. Right?

But did he want to see her? That was the more pressing question.

He held up his hands in front of him, staring at them intently. They were Death Eater hands. They were hands of hate, and anger, and passion. But they had also been other things too...

Despite himself, his mind flitted to a different red-head. Lily.

"Sev! I didn't expect to see you here!" exclaimed the girl.

"Yeah, er, sorry I, er" stumbled the younger Severus over his words.

"Well since you're here then we can go to the game together!"

"The game?"

"Oh you know! Slytherin versus Hufflepuff! The quidditch game today?" Lily frowned at him. "That is why you were on your way outside, wasn't it?"

Trying desperately not to show his guilt, Severus could only nod his head.

"Perfect! Then you can sit with me!"

And with that, Lily grabbed Severus' hand and dragged him off in the opposite direction to where he had wanted to be. But he didn't mind; Lily was holding his hand.

Looking now at his hands, he knew that they were also hands of shame. And regret. And determination.

He raised his eyebrows at himself. Determination huh? If they were so full of determination, then what was he determined to do?

To help Ginny Weasley.

She had done what she had done for a reason. And he wanted to know what that reason was. He wanted to help her control the excess power she had running through her veins. He wanted to help her to become the witch she could. He wanted to help her to be better...better than what he could ever have been.

With his mind set, Snape stood up and with a sweeping look of his room, he traipsed out towards the grounds.

He was late; the game had already started. He spied Potter sitting with Granger, and the Toad sitting a little further down than them. Deciding he didn't want to share the remainder of the game with them, he turned and headed towards the stands exactly behind the large goal hoops that the Hufflepuff Keeper was religiously guarding. He had to turn as an unexpected moan filled through the crowd; apparently Weasley had missed an exceptionally easy goal. He smirked to himself; that boy was in Gryffindore yet he had the courage of a rat.

He climbed the stairs in silence, listening to the commentary that was, he supposed, being monitored by Minerva McGonagall. Finally reaching his seat, he found himself facing the back of Ginny Weasley who was slowly circling the pitch, her eyes darting from side to side. She turned slightly and Snape could see her face, skrewed up in frustration at the lack of a golden glint. Kirke, a Hufflepuff player swerved suddenly and Ginny stared in his direction. Actually, it looked to Snape as if she was staring at him. Ginny hesitated. Kirke flew upwards. And the snitch, which had been flittering innocently behind Kirke's ancle, flew off in another direction, Ginny chasing after it.

It was too late though. With another groan from the crowd, the Hufflepuff chasers had managed to score. Snape thought he heard a song from a very green portion of the crowd. His lip curling slightly, he remembered the song that Malfoy had thought up, "Weasley is our King."

Thinking about Weasleys, he turned back to Ginny. She had missed the snitch. But why? She was good enough and fast enough... She had hesitated. That was the answer. She had looked up, looked right at him, and then hesitated before going for the snitch.

He watched her red hair flick behind her in the wind as she swerved and ducked through the other players, once more on the prowl for the snitch. She changed her course suddenly. Snape thought she was going to try and score herself, but then, with dawning comprehension, he stood up and held his breath; Ginny was going for the Snitch! Summerby's eyes widened in fear as the red-head sped directly for him. She reached out a hand, the Hufflepuff Seeker far behind her, and with apparent ease, snatched the snitch from right under Summerby's nose. Zooming around one of the goal's poles, her hand held high with the snitch struggling against her grip, she descended to the ground.

There was an audible sigh from the crowd; the torturous event was over. They had lost, but thanks to Ginny, they hadn't lost too badly; Two hundred and forty against two hundred and thirty.

As her comrades joined Ginny on the ground, Snape felt, more than saw, Ginny looking right up at him. He turned, his cloak billowing around him as the wind carried a hearty chorus of "Weasley is the King," up to his seat, and, with a sigh, made his way back to his office.

Once sitting in his seat behind his dark desk, a few last parchments of late homework sprawled out in front of him, he was surprised to hear an odd sound. It was a buzzing. No...more like...a vibrating.

Snapping to attention, Snape's hand jumped to his pocket. Sure enough, his hand fell on the twin quill. Setting it carefully on the desk in front of him, Snape watched as the quill spelled out a few words.

"I like fluffy things"

He stared for a moment as the words disappeared into the wood of the desk. It took him an even longer moment to remember the codes that Ginny had chosen for them. Hastily he wrote back, "As long as they are pink", his mouth curling into a smile as he watched the words disappear too.

Gathering his cloak, he hurriedly cleared his desk with a flick of his wand (the parchments rolled up and stacked themselves neatly,) and swept out of his office.

She was waiting for him outside the stretch of wall.

"You're late," she said before adding, "sir."

"I didn't think you'd be out, what with the result of the match." He turned around before she could ask and, when he turned back, found a large door in the wall that definitely hadn't been there before.

But this time, the door looked different. Before, it had resembled the windows inside the room. Now...it was quaint?

"After me, I suppose," smiled Ginny, before opening the door wide and walking into a room that Severus honestly didn't recognise.

"What happened to the windows?" he frowned as he followed Ginny into the room.

"I suppose I don't need them tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because...I suppose I have something else."

"Something that trumps your need to see things clearly?"

"Oh no," smiled Ginny ruefully. "Something that trumps my ability to see things clearly."

Snape was confused.

"Professor, please sit." She indicated the long couch that Severus had been eying carefully. It was covered in a black leather and looked somewhat like a chaise. Next to it was a single armchair that matched the previous furniture.

Apprehensively (what for! Snape demanded in his head,) he sat on the chaise, facing the chair where Ginny had now perched herself quite comfortably.

"I have some questions for you, Sir," she explained.

"You have questions for me?" scoffed Snape. "How about you answer me this first; what gave you the idea to kiss a – a – a," once more, Snape found himself lost for words.

"To kiss a Professor?" provided Ginny, looking down at her nails and trying to hide a smile of amusement.

"A monster!" corrected Snape. He wasn't too sure why he had phrased it exactly in those words, but he felt that he was right. Scratch that; he knew that he was right. He was a monster.

"You are not a monster," snapped Ginny, her eyes looking up from her fingers and staring hard at Snape. "I knew that the moment you first touched me, in this room, on this hand. I knew you were no more a monster than Lupin is."

"Not saying much considering he's a werewolf," Severus was actually sulking! He didn't like that Ginny was saying these things about him. These nice things about him. He wanted her to hate him. To despise him. To remind him every second of how much of a not nice person he was. He wanted her to treat him like he deserved to be treated; like the traitor he was.

"That's exactly my point! He wasn't made a monster by his choice! It was, I dunno, circumstances or fate or destiny or something!"
"No one deserves a fate where they hate themselves for living, but where living is the only choice that they have!" roared Snape. Ginny looked slightly frightened. Good! Snape thought loudly in his mind. She should be scared! She should feel frightened! She should want to hold my hand?

For Ginny had done just that. She had slipped her fingers gently through his own, and, to add insult to injury, she was smiling!

"That's why you aren't a monster," she explained. "There is something in you that wants to fight back against what you have been made into." Snape had the decency to try to cover up his confusion – he was the professor after all – but he couldn't hide anything from Ginny in this room. "You still have some good in you fighting back," explained Ginny. "And while you can still fight, so can I."

"You're determination depends nothing on me," whispered Snape.

"No, my determination doesn't," agreed Ginny. "But my ability to succeed does."

Seeing that she had more to say, Snape kept quiet.

"I have had a strange inclination since my first year towards the Dark Arts. I never had it during my first year – only afterwards. Only after...the chamber," she whispered the last words, but hearing them brought strength back to her voice. Snape sat deadly still, as though any movement on his part would stop the flow of words now issuing from the girl. Words that he didn't think he would hear; words that could possibly answer his theory about Ginny Weasley.

"In my second year, we had Lupin as our Defence Teacher. Despite never having met him before or known anything about werewolves, during one of our lessons he touched me and I immediately knew – somehow beyond my understanding – that he was what he was. I didn't tell anyone; I thought I was going crazy to assume on some strange and weird feeling that my teacher was a werewolf. And then at the end of that year, I heard that he was leaving because someone had let slip that he was a werewolf...I had been right."

"That, er," Snape finally cut in as Ginny took a steadying breathe, "was me. Who, as you so delicately put it, 'let slip' about Lupin. It was a childish thing to do, but I suppose it would have come out sooner or later. Yes," he added at Ginny's raised eyebrow, "I am defending what I did."

"Anyway," she continued, "that was the first time I'd really experienced anything that...peculiar before. I was stupid. I thought it made me special. And then, in class, every spell seemed to come to me so easily. I thought I was gifted. But then I started thinking about it; I didn't perform so well in charms or transfiguration. Potions I did well in but everything else was sloppy. I started to work harder and then, one day, something...I dunno...snapped."

Snape breathed sharply. Something had snapped? Did that mean that something had broken or had fallen in place? He voiced his question.

"Both."

"Both?"

"Yes. I felt myself break and at the same time felt something else settle in. I had always like Harry Potter," she ignored a smirk from Snape, "but just before my third year, during the holidays, I started to have terrible dreams. Of graveyards and muggles getting killed by green flashes of light. And, worst of all, I started to have an obsession with Potter."

"An obsession? As in you liked him very much?"

"No, not in a 'liking' sense. As in a, I don't know, 'stalk him and tear him apart' sense. You know?"

"You wanted to kill him?"

"Yes!" she nodded enthusiastically, but then added "But no at the same time. It was as if a part of me wanted to kill him and it was aided by the fact that I like him."

"You still like him?" asked Snape.

"Very much," she smiled dolefully. "I know you won't understand. You hate him as much as, I think, he hates you. But when it comes to love...I don't think one gets to choose who one falls in love with. Or when. Or how many times. All that I know is...I l-l-love Harry."

"You're a very romantic person, aren't you Miss Weasley?" Snape commented, having little else to say.

"I may be romantic, but that doesn't mean that I believe in happy endings. Quite the opposite; I believe in hard-earned endings. Ones where you can really say that what you did was everything that you could do."

"And what about everything that you couldn't? What about the lives that couldn't be saved? The apologies that couldn't be said? The moments of regret that plague us all?"

"If you regret something that much," said Ginny after a pause, "then you should try and fix the mistakes you made."

"And if it is too late?"

"It's never too late," Ginny said angrily. Snape was surprised by the sudden flare in her eyes and how her hair seemed to bristle its agreement with her words. "There is always something that can be done!"

Snape felt that the conversation was heading awfully close to home; he didn't want Ginny to know about his past...he didn't want anyone to know about his past come to think of it.

"Anyways," Ginny calmed down all too quickly for Snape's liking, "so in third year, I come to school and discover a mad man teaching me defence. But, again, I touched him...and I knew that he wasn't who he said he was. I could feel something else in him. Again, I only found out later that the man who called himself Mad-Eye Moody and who had been teaching me for the whole year was, in fact, not Mad-Eye Moody and an imposter using a potion to disguise himself. After the death of Cedric..." her voice quivered slightly and then stopped.

"We all blame ourselves for what happened that day," Snape said quietly. "We all think we could have – or should have – done something to save Cedric."

Ginny shook her head slightly.

"That's not just it though... The whole year, my, er, longing? I think I can call it that. My longing for Potter grew. It got so bad that I had to find a, er, exit for it. I couldn't use magic; it would make things much worse. But then, at the Yule Ball, Neville had asked me to go along with him. And, I, er," Ginny's face had gone as red as her hair and she was looking down as if trying to force herself through the ground. Snape felt something tingle in the air; that weird aura that he had felt around Ginny the night that she had kissed him had come back.

"You kissed him." Snape made it sound like he was saying something very obvious out of a text book.

"I did," Ginny looked up at Snape, expecting to see something there that wasn't. He had reverted his face to a blank page once again. He was dead to emotions. The world could collapse and he would merely acknowledge it with a polite nod of the head. Ginny didn't care; he was still listening. "And when I did, I felt something else. It wasn't a passionate kiss or anything. It was, I think, just the fact that I was close to him. That I had some type of contact with him that wiped away...everything. For the first time in ages, my head was clear of thoughts of Potter. Of anyone. So I made a plan; I had to get a boyfriend."

"But you never dated Neville," Snape stated. He laughed inwardly at her amazed look at his knowledge of her movements. He had always found it important to keep up with the gossip at Hogwarts, made especially easy by the teachers who loved to gossip more than (if possible,) most of the students.

"No," said Ginny. "I didn't date him. I felt terrible for doing it, but the same night I kissed Neville, I found Michael and started to get to know him better. It wasn't until the end of the year that we got together. When he returned," Snape knew she meant the Dark Lord, "my head was bursting. I ended up in the hospital wing for most of the Final Task of the Triwizard Tournament. All I could think about was Harry, Harry, Harry. And then Michael really came in handy...er..." she blushed again, but Severus Snape knew better than to pry into a woman's personal life unless she offered.

"So what now?" he asked, politely leading her off the topic of her third year.

"Things kinda went hazy after that. I mean, we ended up in Sirius's house, after realising that he wasn't the bad guy everyone had suspected. And in that house...I dunno, it must have been all of the protective spells put on us and on the house and on everything, but while I was there, I could think straight."

Snape nodded his head slowly.

"It is possible," he said cautiously, "that with all of the magic surrounding the house, that your sense of magic was overwhelmed. You were put into a state of shock that allowed only your, er, true self to surface."

"I didn't think of that..." agreed Ginny. "But you see, that's exactly my point. I didn't think of anything. But then this year, back here at Hogwarts, it all came back. And it doesn't help that Harry is everywhere that I am. So then there I was again with Michael...using him..." Severus noted the guilt in her voice all too easily. "And then, when the DA thing started, I was intrigued by this room because it gave me something I needed; quiet. A place to think. Whatever I needed, it was inclined to give to me."

"And I suppose this is where I come in?" he didn't show the excitement he was feeling inside. So many answers were being given to him! He wanted to scribble them all down; his head was going to explode with his theory that was slowly being fulfilled.

"Yes. You found me. I took you here. And then you touched me."

Snape frowned for a moment. He had touched her? When? He remembered her touching him – she had touched his face and his lips – but he didn't remember...he looked down at his hand which was still linked with Ginny's. He had touched her; he had put his hand on hers.

"And what did you find – sense, rather – when we had this physical contact?" he asked apprehensively.

"Nothing," Ginny smiled widely, joyfully, wonderfully. "Absolutely nothing! It was fantastic! Absolute bliss! It was an absolute abyss of nothing! For the first time in a long time, when I was around you...I could think! I could breathe! I could fathom my own conclusions without having a nagging sense of something else to change my ideas!"

"Sounds – "

She cut him off

"brilliant, I know! And, it gets better; the more time I spent with you, the better my control got. Something in you, Professor, something so dark or so strong, I dunno, but something so hectic that I got it when I was around you!"

"Something in me?"

"Yes! You are naturally inclined, naturally capable, to hide things! To set things in your mind aside!"

"It is called Occlumency," said Snape, suddenly the pieces falling apart. Blocking your mind to powerful magic needed powerful magic. Or a powerful will to block out that magic. So, Ginny Weasley, when she touched him, had experienced his ability of Occlumency. Possibly even Legilimens.

Ginny's eyes were sparkling. She was grinning foolishly like a child who had found an easter egg three months after the hunt.

"You still haven't explained why...you...er...kissed me." Severus felt foolish even after he had said it, but he knew it was a question that had to be asked.

Ginny frowned slightly, but her smile still remained. She tilted her head slightly to the side and looked at Snape, amused by his question.

"I told you; I needed answers. I needed to know more about you."

"And what did you find out?"

"That I could trust you."

"How did you find that out through our – that – er," he was feeling more and more like a school boy again, "physical contact?"

"A girl can tell a lot by a kiss," Ginny smirked. "But it wasn't just that. The effect that you have on me," she blushed at what her statement implied and then rushed on, "it's been wearing off. I needed to know if I could still get it out of you. It worked with Neville and it works somewhat with Michael. So I thought I had to try it on you."

"It's wearing off? That's...interesting..." Snape's mind was rushing through ideas quickly before he landed on the best one he had. "Lessons!" he exclaimed.

"Excuse me sir?"

"Lessons. I will give you Occlumensy lessons so that you can clear your mind and rid yourself of unwanted thoughts about Potter."

Ginny hurled herself at the professor, her arms flung around him while her hair spread over his face. She hugged him, mumbling unintelligible words into his shoulder. Snape was...stunned. He was frozen. Once more, he found that he could do little else but let the girl get her silliness over with and withdraw from him. She sat next to him on the chaise, their robes matching the dark leather and meshing together to fall, allied as one, over the edge of it.

"I didn't understand a word of that," he drawled humorously.

"I was just saying...thank you," Ginny blushed.

"My pleasure. Although you shouldn't thank me just yet."

Ginny nodded without really thinking before saying, "I, er, guess I should get back to my dorm huh?" she asked, somewhat awkwardly.

"That would be a very good idea."

"One more thing," Ginny stared hard at Severus Snape. She wanted to do it one more time. To feel the absolute nothing of her own mind just one more time before she started the hard work that lay ahead of her.

"Ginny...don't you think one time is enough?" Severus asked slowly. Ginny carried on staring into his dark eyes. "Ginny?" Ginny shook her head, and, funnily enough, Severus sighed in resignation.

But Ginny just smiled and held up her hand. Raising his hand, Snape put his palm against hers. She closed her eyes, as if savouring something delicious. Snape tried to feel something...the aura around Ginny, magic coming through her hands, but he couldn't feel anything; Ginny was completely closed. She was completely herself.

He wished he had an inclination as to what she was thinking, but then her eyes snapped open, she smiled and then casually stood up.

"When's my first lesson?" she asked.

"I would say tomorrow night at six, but I'm actually...preoccupied at that time," Snape sneered as he thought about Potter's Occlumens lessons. "I might only be done after midnight."

"I'd prefer lessons in the early morning. Before breakfast. When the castle is asleep."

"I suppose I could manage that."

Ginny smirked.

"Unless you're not a morning person," she said.

"Most are under the impression that I'm not a person at all," Snape returned the smirk.

Ginny smiled sadly.

"They're all wrong."

"Or, they're all right."

She shook her head vigorously.

"I don't believe that. You're not a bad person, Severus."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Er, Sir," Ginny corrected, a red flush creeping slightly up her neck.

With an amused glint in his eye, Snape wondered whether his two Occlumens students would be anything alike. No, he definitely thought Ginny would get it faster than Potter. After all, Potter's problem wasn't strictly speaking a form of Legilimens. It was a connection that needed no eyecontact, no close proximity, only, from the looks of it, extreme emotion...it was almost as if the boy and the Dark Lord were one feeling being. As if the Dark Lord didn't have enough of himself to feel with, and now he needed another exit.

"Professor?" Ginny said for about the third time.

"Huh?" Snape looked quickly to Ginny who was now standing by the door of the room.

"I asked, is it alright for us to start tomorrow morning?"

Snape's arm tingled slightly.

"No..." he said slowly, not able to betray a look to his arm. "Not tomorrow. We'll decide on a day the normal way."

"Those quills come in handy," Ginny smiled and sadly looked to Severus, alone in the white room on the chaise, black against black. "You're not a bad person," she repeated.

And then she was out the door.

Snape sat for a long time before he rose and walked out the room too, his arm stinging along the Dark Mark.

He was being summoned.

(A/N: So tell me what you think? Good? Not good? There's still a bit more emotional blackmail going to be going on - next chapter! Whoop ^_,^ WonderWhiteRabbit gleefully awaiting your replies!)