"I was wondering, Madam Pomfrey", Hermione first spoke on her own initiative since they had started rounds, "Why a natural wake-up from stunning is beneficial to mental health."
Seamus was last on their tour, since with the Stasis Charm from Madam Pomfrey on his legs Hermione had missed at night, he was in stable condition and required least qualified attention. She had tried not to sound too doubtful of an issue she knew less than the basics about, and judging from the nurse's benevolent expression, it had worked.
"Several healer's argue over the precise mechanisms", she replied, in the considerate tone she reserved for any patient's bedside, "But it's common ground that a Stunning works similar to a shock on the mind. You're muggle-born, aren't you?"
"My parents are dentists."
"Then I don't have to explain electricity to you, and – are you in any case familiar with muggle etiology?"
"With -"
"Ideas of non-magical folks about causes and development of health problems", Madam Pomfrey added.
"Er – no, my parents kept their work pretty much out of our lives at home."
"Then you won't have heard about epileptic seizures, have you?"
"The term sounds familiar. But I've no idea what muggles think of them."
"Well, a Stunning resembles the uncontrolled firing of neurons as in a seizure. The brain is fully functional after a very short period of unconsciousness, but the longer we allow his brain to sort out the malfunction afterwards, the less symptoms he'll suffer when awake. Most people feel entirely clear and focused if they've been allowed to sleep through this phase of recovery."
"What symptoms would be common for someone woken too early?"
"Oh, mostly headaches, dizziness, amnesia regarding the event prior to the Stunning, and in some individuals, reduced concentration, nausea and impaired short-term memory creation."
"So – we're letting him sleep to increase the chances that he still can tell us who attacked him by the time he wakes up?"
"Not 'us', Miss Granger", said a stern, serious voice behind her, "His teachers, such as me and your head of house."
Snape had stepped up to them, unseen in the semi-darkness. "As for the who, I guess there's little doubt on where to look for the culprits", he added, oblivious to her flinch.
"How can you be so sure?", Hermione challenged him. She felt certain to harbor the same suspicions, but his haughty, distant manner stirred a rebellious streak in her.
"Madam Pomfrey, if you're done with positioning your patient, I'd like to show Miss Granger what she must have missed earlier in the darkness."
"Of course." The nurse stuffed the pillow back beneath Seamus' arm, who now rested on his other side, then started to arrange and rearrange the usual items on the bedside table. Hermione had a distinct feeling she took her time, watching them.
"See these bruises on his upper legs?", Snape indicated at purple-bluish shadows without touching him. "What happened here? Anything remarkable about it?"
She had to use her imagination, but then, the spots and curved stripes melted to a distinct shape. "That's a shoe sole", she concluded. "But I don't see anything – special in it."
"There isn't", Snape replied dryly. "How about these?"
He pulled up the wide sleeves of Seamus' robe, revealing more bruises on his lower arm.
"No."
"And what about -", swift and with surprising strength, he tore apart the shirt, buttons clattering on the ground, "those?"
Hermione gasped. Across his chest, in vibrant lilac, the word scum glared ferociously at her.
"Reparo", Snape muttered, waving his wand, and the buttons flew back to their original place, attaching the front neatly. Hardly managing her rage, she did not dare to ask, but Snape must have deciphered the question from her face.
"A pun, actually, if a cruel one", he said. "First letter from the people who administered the beating."
"It's not an 'I' -"
" - but an 's'. If I've been informed correctly, and we can safely assume this to be the case here, you don't call this group of students 'inquisitorials', do you?"
"No", she replied, still aghast. "Why not 'smut'?"
"Part of the pun", he whispered, casting a quick glance at Madam Pomfrey behind him. Seeing her puzzled face, he looked her straight in the eye. A warning of what they'll do to whom he's involved with, his voice echoed through her mind.
I don't under- Oh my god.
"I should very much hope that your caring skills have increased to a greater extent than your Occlumency", he added, earning an outraged stare from her. Madam Pomfrey finally left the scene. Apparently she had decided the two of them wouldn't engage in any indecencies behind her back.
Perhaps it had been his teaching in observing Seamus, or her mind had simply fallen into a coma, hit by recent events like a Stunning Spell, now waking up assorted on another lever, harboring the capability to process her surroundings in more elaborate dimensions – but when Madam Pomfrey huddled around the dressing screens and vanished from sight, she truly, deeply understood what he had meant by the roles they'd been given. And the power that lay in sticking to them.
As long as he treated her like a student, more or less derogatory and dismissive as people had become accustomed to, the very space between them was a safe spot in the menace around.
If I had accomplished anything, Severus, you'd hardly be hearing this, would you, she thought, eyes resting comfortably in his in semi-darkness.
"Stay focused, Miss Granger", he abandoned their connection. It was impossible to read his face. The absence of his influence left a slightly bitter, uneasy stirring in her stomach, but she suspected it to be a badly processed feeling, tangled in the less accessible parts of her consciousness. She closed her eyes, groping through the emptiness. What in this mess belonged to her soul, and which parts were his? This tense, blank unpleasantness, where had she felt that before?
He must have been watching her, eyes wide shut, standing next to Seamus, apparently regardless of his needs. Yet, he did not interrupt her inner journey.
The inaction eased her tension. His lack of interference dialed down her unpleasantness. That's it, she realized with a flash of joy. I know.
"You are intrusive", she replied, carefully keeping her voice down, "But you haven't violated my boundaries."
The sharp inhale at the other side of the bed was confirmation enough. She granted him the fraction of a second to control his face, then opened her eyes again.
He kept his gaze fixed on the student between them, pretending to check the position of the pillow. "I used Legilimency on you without your permission, while you still can't defend yourself."
"It's not offensive if I agree in the process."
When had his breathing quickened like this?
"But I'm responsible for – enabling you to understand what's happening, so you could – disagree – if you wished", he replied.
Seamus still rested on various cushions, vastly asleep, too confused to wake, very much in contrast to the two persons standing at either side of his bed. She let the moment of unspoken clarity pass, as the rising sun slowly crept toward them, chasing darkness from the scene. Its golden shimmer reached their hands and shoulders simultaneously. "Teach me, then. Properly. Make sure I can disagree, protect myself if I'm – uncomfortable – with whatever is happening to me."
The warmth had reached his shoulders, but his eyes were glowing already.
" - so that by the time I … agree, you'll be sure I'm – comfortable."
"I shall wait for you, then", he whispered. The blazing sun immersed them in the promise of lighter, less cooler times.
Seamus stirred in his sleep, pushed the pillow from him and kicked, almost hitting Snape at delicate parts. "A few more hours", he commented, reaching for his eyes, checking the pupils. "See how they're dilating evenly now, and synchronous in both eyes? Any deviance of equally reactive pupils is a hint to severe neurological disturbance..."
He was as demanding in his instructions as Madam Pomfrey, but offered much more useful guidance with them. Whereas the nurse had only given her most basic, pragmatic schematics and directions on how to work with patients, he urged her to learn how to assess and, within strict and narrow limits, treat them. She could never have found his comments on side-effects or inferences in any book.
He had kept her so busy and focused she barely noticed Ginny at Madam Pomfrey's desk had not woken up, either, when the nurse granted her leave for breakfast and lessons.
She did not look like suffering, Hermione noted, a familiar heavy and thick clot rising to her throat as she pulled her robes from the chair. Following a sudden instinct, she tiptoed up to the bedside table, pulling the drawer as quietly as possible.
Someone had placed the eyes neatly on a deep red, shimmering silk, from where they stared back at Hermione. Their gray circles embedded unevenly elliptic, unmoving pupils. Breathing rather hastily, she rammed the drawer back into the cabinet.
"Perhaps an exercise to empty your mind might be in order", she heard Snape from Madam Pomfrey's chair, where she had left him a note on run-out supplies. "Preparing you to fight off any intrusion, Miss Granger." Too much of a risk to stay at first names, if Madam Pomfrey was supposed to leave them alone again in her dominion.
"Perhaps."
"Improving one's ability to withstand intrusion, or provocation from whatever source, should come in handy to you as a teenage student." Heavy emphasis on the last two words, but Hermione had caught up to the idea: She couldn't afford to lose her tongue, nerve or anything else with Umbridge in Defense Again, even if it was the next-to-last lesson coming up.
He was watching her very closely. "As getting hung on provocation has landed you in here, after all."
Rage boiled up in her, forcing the clot in her throat to budge. "I didn't mean to -", she went off, but Snape, looking at her collar, raised half an eyebrow. "That's a 'P' in practical, Miss Granger."
She had fallen straight for his trap.
"Come here. Take a seat." He pointed his wand to his chair, and under a complicated twirl of its tip, a twin exemplar peeled itself from the original. "Please feel free to sit at a comfortable level of proximity."
She followed suit, still slightly embarrassed. From where she sat, he could have easily touched her, but not by coincidence. Watching him perform a perfect multiplying charm seemed an all too fitting introduction to their traditional roles.
"You've come a long way", he began, voice a little louder than a whisper. If Madam Pomfrey wished to overhear their conversation, she was probably able to from behind any of the dressing screens. "Emptying your mind as you did some minutes ago is the most important part."
"I wasn't doing it to occlude -"
"No, you were trying to remove all traces of foreign interference, tracing them back to me, and you've exceeded the point of understanding only your own feelings. Which allowed you to distinguish them from, and identify mine."
"I've been using Legilimency on you?"
"In its most preliminary stages. But mind the two profoundly different skills, Miss Granger. You weren't occluding while at it. I could have manipulated your mind if I had wished to."
"But if my mind was empty – isn't that enough? What else does it take?"
"The mind is a most wondrous entity. You need a special sort of boundaries, Miss Granger. Suppress your emotions, your wishes and needs, to a point just beneath your conscious self, where you can access it if you wish, but don't act on it – because you can't."
"Can't?"
"Imagine them as being pushed under water while standing above", he went on, not the least surprised by her confusion, "By the time you'll see them rise, you'll need to return to a safe harbor, or otherwise a storm will grow from this enraged sea."
"I'd hardly stand a chance in seamanship if I don't know the waters I'm sailing in, regardless of my purpose."
"You'd crash against the rocks, or get lost in shoals."
"But I might accidentally discover the most beautiful lost places in remote corners, where no one has ever bothered to look", she replied, searching for his eyes. He allowed her to find them. "And if I'm too far from a harbor, I might choose to stay there instead."
"You might." They weren't talking solely about closing their minds, and knew it. "It's most important that your soul feels like a safe place." He turned his hand on the armrest, opening up, and she cherished every moment of wrapping hers into his. But the hunger rising inside her, the longing to pull him over, those were precisely the instincts she needed to govern.
"Push them back", he demanded, reminding her that he still had easy access to her inner turmoil, "Don't allow them to fill you up. Discipline your mind."
What else was she holding than flesh?, Hermione tried to unravel her soul from her wishes. What did it matter to her that a grown man invited her to dive into a teenage crush, letting her believe it to be love - ?
Wouldn't – shouldn't he be the first of many, as she deserved? Wasn't he a pawn in their dealings with the Dark Arts as literally anyone else?
Wasn't he, like all others, ultimately meaningless, a footnote in history books, a faint and evanescent breeze on the ocean of much larger cataclysm?
A deep breath chased all thick and sultry air from her chest, casting it to the winds, leaving her in calm and steady indifference. His hand suddenly felt hard and tense.
"You're well prepared for a storm, Miss Granger", he said, "Time to engage in rougher spheres."