Now that her hands were finally healed, Professor Snape sent word to Hermione Monday morning that she was to start her detentions with him that evening. Despite her groaning and dread all day, Hermione trudged down the dungeon steps the evening for her first detention – she'd never skip a detention assigned by Snape, no matter how unfair.
When it was a few seconds to seven o'clock, she knocked sharply on the classroom door.
"Enter."
Hermione entered the classroom, pausing in the doorway at what she saw inside.
The Potions classroom had been completely changed. The desks and brew stations had all been cleared away, lined up against the walls of the room. There was a large empty space on the floor, and Snape was looking at her, eyes glittering.
"Miss Granger," he said. "Do come in."
Hermione closed the door behind her, still looking at the empty space, before her eyes went to Snape's.
"Today for detention you will be demonstrating the circle you used to banish my colleague," Snape said flatly. He gestured, and a piece of chalk flicked over to Hermione, who caught it from the air. "You will explain your circle and ritual to me," he said, eyes glittering, "in painstaking detail."
Hermione groaned.
"I suppose I can't claim it's proprietary information, can I?" she sighed, stepping forward.
Snape's eyes gleamed. "No, you cannot."
The detention wasn't anything like Hermione had expected. She'd been warned of chopping flobberworms for hours, of hand-scrubbing cauldrons until her knuckles bled, of reorganizing the supply cupboard and all of the hundreds of ingredients inside. She'd never imagined she'd spend it drawing on the floor, teaching her Head of House ritual magic as he sat on the stone floor across from her.
Snape had a much more extensive knowledge of ritual magic than her coven did, and he seemed to grasp the concepts she explained rather quickly.
"The ring still works for protection without runes inside?" he inquired as she drew it out.
"To a degree," she said. "If we had been summoning something that might try and consciously escape, I would have wanted runes. But it was just to protect ourselves from magical power backlash, so I wasn't overly concerned."
Snape understood the heart and the candle placement, as Hermione drew X's in small circles on the ground to mark where the candles had gone, but he was clearly taken aback when she started explaining the channels and veins.
"Did you make this up?" he asked sharply. "Where are you getting this vocabulary, 'channels' and 'veins'?"
"Um…" Hermione wracked her brain. "It was in a book."
"What book?" Snape demanded, and Hermione shrugged helplessly.
"I don't remember. I honestly don't know," she said quickly, holding up her hands when Snape looked ready to pounce. "I read a bunch of books on ritual magic over the summer, and I picked up on certain things along the way that helped build the complete picture of how ritual magic tended to work. It wasn't like one book explicitly said, 'these are channels, these are veins', but one book might mention 'you will need extra thick channels to channel the amount of power necessary', or 'this configuration of veins will allow…'."
Snape looked at her.
"Though I dread to know the answer," he said, "where did you get so many ritual magic books, Miss Granger?"
"Here and there," Hermione said evasively. "Flourish and Blotts has a small section on ritual magic, you know."
Snape sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I cannot believe I am going to genuinely ask this," he said, "but, Miss Granger – do you have direct contact with Magic itself?"
Hermione paused.
"…Sir?"
"I am aware of your little prophecy," Snape said, sneering. "I am also aware the line 'whether gifted or claimed, true, faked, or false' clearly means that even if you are making up the entire concept of 'New Blood', the prophecy could still hold true." His eyes bored into hers. "Nothing in your little prophecy speaks that you have a direct line to Magic, but the rumors amongst your classmates spread that you clearly do."
"It's not my prophecy," Hermione said quietly. "It was Luna's."
"It is about you," Snape said sharply. "And while I had thought I had a handle on interpreting it, this knowledge from nowhere about a forgotten art has me wondering, Miss Granger." His eyes held hers. "Do you have a direct line to Magic itself?"
Hermione opened her mouth to respond, but Snape cut her off.
"Don't answer right away," he warned her. "Stop, think, and really consider, Miss Granger, if you can account for where all your knowledge has come from."
Biting her lip, Hermione sat back and thought.
Despite Snape's unsurety, Hermione was fairly confident she had picked up the basic building blocks and essentials of ritual magic just from reading ritual magic books over the summer. She'd had access to older ritual books than she suspected were available on the general market, thanks to Quirrell's trunk of books, and she wondered if they'd been clearer in their instructions because ritual magic hadn't been uncommon back when they were written.
Or maybe it was just Dark rituals that had had more explicit directions to make sure the caster was cautious enough? Most of the rituals she'd read in Quirrell's books had been Grey at best, nearly all of them dodgy and Dark. Hermione had read them not to learn to cast them specifically, but to get a better idea for how ritual magic had worked. And it had clearly worked, hadn't it? Now she had a good understanding of the underpinnings of the ritual magic field.
A conversation from the previous year drifted back to her mind, though, one from a study session in Ravenclaw, lingering in her mind.
"Does it say that in the book?"
"Err—no—"
"Then how do you know what the wand motion is for?"
Hermione bit her lip.
"Professor," she said, "if I did have a direct line to Magic itself… how would I know?"
Snape raised an eyebrow.
"If you frequently find yourself with obscure knowledge you do not know the source of, I daresay—"
"No, like, what would it feel like?" Hermione wanted to know. "How would I know?"
Snape considered her for a moment.
"When you reach for your magic," he said, "what do you feel?"
Closing her eyes, Hermione reached down into her core.
Her magic pool was full and steady, a pretty shade of light purple, and though she could sense her core spinning and wobbling, she could also feel connections leaving from her core, going out and connecting her to others, giving them small bits of magic and taking small bits of theirs in turn, helping stabilize her core. The air elemental inside her seemed to leap at the chance to do magic, sensing it was being 'looked at', while the earth elemental seemed a calm and solid presence within her.
As she described all this to Professor Snape, she could sense his eyes on her, even though her own eyes remained closed.
"Now, Miss Granger," he instructed. "If you expand your awareness outside of yourself… what do you sense then?"
"I'm not sure I know how to do that," Hermione admitted.
Snape scoffed. "If you did not, you would not have gotten yourself burned."
If that was what he meant, Hermione did know how to reach out with her magic, kind of, though not 'expand her awareness' without doing that. Concentrating, she pushed out a tendril of her magic to see what would happen, but almost as soon as it left her body, it dissipated into the air.
Frowning, Hermione tried again, but the same thing occurred – without a strong purpose or direction, her magic seemed to just disappear into the air as if evaporating. Curious, Hermione tried what she had done the previous time – she reached down with her magic, into the stones of Hogwarts, to see what she could sense there.
Now, she had more success. Her magic was able to hold itself together once in the stone, and she could faintly feel the magic of Hogwarts in the stones itself, a sort of silent, protective presence, almost parental and affectionate. She could tell what direction she would need to reach out in to find the core of the magic of Hogwarts (though she daren't – being burned once was more than enough), and she was aware of the magic itself lingering in the stones.
She explained all this to Snape, who listened thoughtfully.
"You can stop, Miss Granger, and open your eyes."
Hermione did so, looking at her teacher. Snape's eyes met hers.
"Though I have never heard of a person having a direct line to Magic," he said, "if such a thing existed, I would imagine it would feel something like one of your coven bonds – a bond going off to nowhere, perhaps to a warm glowing or dazzling and overwhelming presence lurking at the back of your mind." He raised an eyebrow. "It does not sound like you have such a bond."
"So I did pick it all up in books along the way, then," Hermione said with satisfaction.
"Did you?" Snape equivocated. "Or did you not? Unless you can cite your sources, or definitively tell me exactly what a bond with Magic itself would feel like, I think you will find it rather hard to disprove that you might."
Hermione found it ironic that she was trying to disprove to her teacher what she was trying so hard to convince her classmates of.
"Maybe I just have a knack for magic?" Hermione offered. "I came to Hogwarts not just wanting to learn magic, but to understand it. Maybe it's because I'm looking for all the underpinnings of it all that I can find what's there."
Snape considered her.
"Perhaps," he said finally. "Now, finish your circle."
Hermione finished sketching out the circle her coven had used to reopen the path to the beyond on Beltane. She explained the couplets they'd each recited, finding herself faltering once again when Snape demanded further explanation on why she hadn't used the original Latin from one of the rituals she'd adapted her own from.
"We don't know Latin. That might have worked back then, when everyone knew and studied Latin, but as it is, we wouldn't have been able to pronounce the words properly at all," Hermione objected. "Translating it into English was the logical choice."
"But you didn't translate it, Miss Granger," Snape challenged, his eyes dark. "You made up your own."
"It's not so much the exact words that matter as the intent and meter," she tried. "The incantation is meant to guide the power's purpose, and the meter to help the magic swell and build."
"I have only ever done rituals in Latin," Snape said. "I have witnessed only two done in English, but they were very Dark, very old, and they did not go very well." His eyes glinted. "How did you know your words would work?"
"I just… they just did?" Hermione winced. "The direction was correct, the meter was right, the incantation felt right…" She shrugged helplessly. "…do you just want to see?" she offered, looking up at him. "You could watch the memory yourself to see?"
Snape looked thrown by the offer, then suspicious.
"After all your defensiveness over showing me pieces of what you did, you now offer me witness to the entirety?" he asked.
Hermione shrugged again. "It'd be easier than trying to explain it all."
Snape raised an eyebrow, before shifting his seating so he was directly across from her.
Hermione swallowed. "I give you permission to enter my mind."
Snape's voice was a murmur. "Legilimens."
It was much different, this time. The fiery mindscape had opened up, but there was a tunnel through the winds and sands leading directly to a particular cave, and Hermione watched as the semi-transparent image of Snape entered that cave.
Blaise was lighting his candle – "A choice once offered, a choice once made; a direction chosen, the place you stayed."
Luna's blue candle lighting, her words a murmur – "An ill-fitting place, for the shade of your soul; compared to the other, where you might be whole."
Susan's determined eyes – "A choice once offered, a choice revoked. A pathway existing, but the way is cloaked."
Harry's careful pronunciation. "A soul left behind, a spirit bitter; A choice once offered, reconsidered."
Her own fingers lighting the wick of her purple candle aflame with the slightest thought. "A choice once made, now amended. The choice again, reextended."
Swirling rainbow light in the lines of the circle, melding into white as they chanted –
"Our will is firm, our intent is right. We restore the star in the darkness of night. We tear open a pathway, our magic bright. We offer you passage into the light!"
The blinding light, the swelling, nearly overwhelming power—
"With our will we hold the shadows at bay, with our power we restore the way! Through the strength of our will and the strength of our bond, we invite you forward, to step into the beyond—!"
The crackling of the power, the heart of the circle lighting up—
Abruptly Hermione fell out of her mind, almost falling over physically from the abrupt disconnect. Snape was looking at her oddly.
"You offered him a choice," he said.
Hermione blinked. "Yes."
"It wasn't an exorcism at all," Snape said, his tone neutral, but Hermione gasped.
"Of course not!" she said, horrified. "I would never!"
"Forgive me if I'd never before considered the possibility of Light necromancy ever existing," he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "The only way I knew to push a ghost into the beyond prior to just now was some form of exorcism – not literally reopening a path through the Veil."
"The Veil?" Hermione asked, but Snape was moving on.
"You called Moaning Myrtle as well," he said, "as well as Professor Binns. I understand your reasoning behind Binns – you announced fairly publicly in the Prophet what you thought of his teaching methods – but Myrtle?"
It was odd to realize Snape must have been viewing the memory somehow faster than she had; she hadn't gotten to that part herself, to re-experience Myrtle's relief and joy.
Hermione bit her lip.
"She was suffering, professor," she said quietly. "She was always 'moaning' because she was sad and alone. It didn't seem right, that she be trapped here forever because of an impulsive, vengeful choice she'd made as a teenager. I thought she might be happier… elsewhere, wherever that is, and it was easy enough to call her too and give her the choice."
Snape raised an eyebrow. "Indeed."
Hermione didn't know what else to say or do, and Snape just continued looking at her for a long moment. Finally, Snape moved, getting to his feet.
"Let's never mention the fact of where you were or what you did to tie your ritual to the school, yes?" he said dryly, standing up. "I'm sure there are rules forbidding students from changing the wardstone – Merlin alive only knows how you found it and got there at all – but if no one thinks to look up such rules or suspect they were broken, were the rules ever broken at all?"
Hermione grinned. "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
Snape smirked. "Exactly."
He moved over to his desk, gesturing for her to stand up.
"Clean all this up, Miss Granger," he instructed. "Your detention is done for tonight once the chalk is gone."
"That's it?" Hermione was surprised.
"Hardly." Snape's eyes gleamed. "You have one at seven o'clock tomorrow, too."
Hermione groaned as she hit the stone ground with a few Aguamenti's, the water washing the chalk from the stone, Snape's dark laugh behind her.