As I promised, another chapter within 24 hours. This chapter is a bit different from the usual. You know how Hannah is often snapped out of an unexplained deep thought? Well, here is the end result of those collected thoughts.

Saturday morning approached as Hannah's dream-filled sleep ended. Not one nightmare haunted Hannah that night, only the nightmare of reality she awoke to. Hogwarts. No life goals, no ambitions, nothing really to wake up to. Just an ongoing stream of dozing off in classes and hoping for an opportunity to surface. She had had her drawing to look forward to before Hogwarts. She had the opportunity to create her own adventures. She could travel wherever she wanted without a school full of teachers pointing her in a certain direction. The only thing that kept Hannah out of drowning in her pool of sadness was her cat. And perhaps Adrian. And Dani. And Snape. And Fred and George. And books. And drawing. She had more than she ever had her entire life, yet she felt she was more empty and unfulfilled than she had ever been. She probably had more than most people had in the school, yet for some God forsaken reason she was never pleased. She had smiled more while she was at Hogwarts than she ever had her entire life. She had everything she had envisioned throughout her homeless life. A place to stay, a friend, a guardian, her own cat. Perhaps that's why she wasn't complete. Perhaps it was because she had already achieved everything she wanted to achieve. Perhaps she needed to create more goals. Perhaps that is the key to happiness. Not achieving goals, but creating them.

Hannah emerged out of her room after what felt like a lifetime of thinking. Snape sat at his desk as usual, with an emotionless guise as always. "Sir?"
"Yes, Miss Byron." His focus never faltered from his marking of potion essays.
"Is now an inappropriate time to bombard you with inquisitiveness?" Snape laid his quill down, and turned in his chair to face Hannah.
"As much as I hate curiosity, Miss Byron, I think you've clearly foreseen that I'd indulge your curiosity at your request. Go ahead." He drawled with his disguised humour none other would've detected.
"Forgive me if this is a sensitive topic, but I was just wondering what gives you a will to live?"
"Is this a question for your own reference?" His voice didn't show any sign of defensiveness or hostility.
"Yes. I evidently value your opinion and often reflect off of it."
"I have a job to do, Miss Byron. You're aware of my position between the Dark Lord and Dumbledore. It's ultimately a very confidential situation, but simply, until the Dark Lord is defeated, my will is strong."
"And after that?"
"I don't know. I don't particularly foresee myself being alive at the time of the Dark Lord's defeat." Hannah lowered her eyes for a moment to face the floor.
"Okay. Thanks." Hannah allowed a flicker of a smile.
"Miss Byron?"
"Mhmm?"
"Why did you ask?" His voice could've been mistaken for anyone else's. There was no trace of any forced emotion.
"I was just thinking." Snape rose an eyebrow at her lack of description. "Just about the meaning of life, really." Snape's other eyebrow shot up.
"And what is your hypothesis?" Hannah let out a long sigh.
"Comparing it to potion making, sir, I think life is the variable of the experiment. I mean, one would contemplate the reason each one was born, rather than the concept itself. I merely believe that the concept of life is the invariant. The fact that you're here, you have a brain, and in most cases, two arms and legs. But I believe the meaning itself is the variant. Everything you add to the potion changes the final solution. The meaning is entirely reliant on what that person makes of it. The meaning in the end is what effect that potion has, not necessarily the fact that the potion exists." Snape stared at Hannah, as if needing a further explanation. The sight alone surprised Hannah. "Basically, your life meaning is based around the job you've been given. The meaning to your life is to be the catalyst in the defeat of the Dark Lord. Mine, on the other hand, is completely unknown, because I haven't yet finished adding enough ingredients to the potion to know what my experiment might result as." Snape's eyes were entirely unfocused, apart from perhaps on the thoughts reeling through his head.
"And what are you going to do with that hypothesis, relating to your life meaning?"
"Well sir, a lifetime happens to be quite long. I figured if I currently don't have a known meaning right now, I could at least act as a catalyst for someone else's meaning."
"And why have you concluded that for the time being?"
"Because, coincidentally, or not coincidentally, you've asked me to help with occlumency, as I happened to arrive at the school barely months after the Dark Lord's supposed rebirth. Everything just seems too coincidental to ignore. Perhaps even this very conversation was a set path to achieve either one of our meanings in life. For the same reason the cat Dumbledore and myself saved happens to now belong to Adrian. For the same reason you just happened to know my parents when you're the first person I ever told about them. It's as if these were all ingredients that needed to be added to the potion, and we're just subconsciously chucking them in, without even realizing what we're doing." Hannah took a deep breath. "It's almost unnaturally natural how things turn out as such a massive coincidence in the end. Every potion in the end has a purpose, whether that purpose is significant or not is irrelevant, the point is that the purpose exists, and so does the potion." Snape nodded absent-mindedly. "And that's why I believe I'm a catalyst. Because I've turned up, and somehow, for some reason, a lot of my past has a significant link to everything. It's as if me being here has made the biggest difference, to your realization that your occlumency skills perhaps aren't as sufficient as you thought, to how Adrian has changed how he interacts with people significantly. Time will tell how much actually mattered, but for all I know, perhaps my meaning is to be the catalyst, not to have a set meaning myself, but to help other people discover and achieve their own." Snape raised his eyes to now face Hannah, a smirk spread across his face.
"I mightn't be as insightful, Miss Byron, but it appears as if this conversation's purpose so coincidentally happens to be a convenient transition to giving me some insight into improving occlumency." Hannah smiled in return.
"If that's what you wish to extract from it." Hannah joked.

"I don't understand why it's not working." Snape growled with frustration. It had already been an hour and Snape still couldn't stop Hannah from breaking into his mind.
"What do you do to stop Voldemort, sir?"
"Everything I've explained. I block him out. Focus on controlling my emotions." Swnape clenched his fists in frustration.
"Yes, but wouldn't he get suspicious? Do you block him out entirely? Or show him a selection of memories?"
"I show him only a selection."
"And what are you trying to block me from seeing?"
"Everything." Snape looked at Hannah, puzzled.
"You understand that it's literally impossible to think about nothing, right? Even in the deepest of sleeps you're thinking. You can't just block out everything. You're going to always end up revealing something if you're literally thinking about not thinking. Try focusing on the selection you want to show me, and avoid thinking about anything you don't want to show me." Snape felt like knocking himself out on the wooden desk. Somehow she manages, yet again, to see detail which is so obviously there but somehow overlooked.
"Following that basis, how is it I can block out other people's attempts at Legilimency?" Snape drawled, trying to contradict Hannah.
"Because they're useless at it." Hannah rolled her eyes.

After several successful attempts of occlumency, feeling less frustrated, Snape allowed himself to be more politely inquisitive. "It still doesn't explain how you can read and enter my present thoughts. I understand the different layers of the mind, how memory is different from present thought, but theoretically occlumency should suffice to defend both."
"I think it's because you're simply allowing me to read your thoughts. You're not going out of your way to defend your thoughts, you most likely don't find any reason to. The circumstances change when you're face to face with a Dark Lord."
"So you're implying that the fact that you can read my mind doesn't matter?"
"Doesn't matter to you. The theory would be different, you're not set on defending certain things, as you can't control what you're actually going to think. I could imagine it's dependant on your will power, and how necessary you find it to block out the attacker, rather than your ability to do so." Snape nodded absent-mindedly. Again, she managed to see what he overlooked. How she knew this theory was beyond him. Then again it was probably just common sense. Or insight. It seemed the two things were entirely different. One was the ability to resolve a situation with the facts that were in sight. The other was just insight.

Thanks for reading again :) Please review, let me know what you think of the content, and please please please correct any grammatical mistakes. As I earlier mentioned, chapters should start coming to me a lot faster, so hopefully uploads will become more regular, despite how busy my day-to-day schedule might become.