Well I got my ten reviews, but I was not inspired to continue until I got my AZ vaccine. I think I wrote the first chapter when I had the flu a few years ago. Which is to say, I was flat on my back on both occasions, listening to Harry Potter audiobooks.
There weren't any suggestions for the name of the first chapter so I've gone with the rather lame 'Memories'. Let me know by review if you have a better idea.
The author acknowledges that all characters are copyright by JK Rowling
Chapter 2 Birds of a feather
Startled by the raven, Hermione had jumped up from the couch immediately. There was a flurry of huge black wings. Too late, Hermione came to her senses, regretted her precipitance and called after it. She ran to the window but there was no sign of the bird. It was gone, merged with the night.
Cursing her stupidity, Hermione sat down at the kitchen table to think, her heart pounding. At the edge of her memory was a dream, fast fading. She clutched at it—Snape, his black gown billowing around him in a gale; the raven, it's huge black wings beating; a single feather floating to the floor. Hermione opened her eyes and saw it, lying close to the sink. Her mind was whirling.
What if? What if?
There was, of course, the possibility that she had been working too hard. Nonetheless Hermione picked up the feather and stowed it carefully away in her backpack in an evidence bag.
Although she was busy with other things, the possibility that the raven might be more than an over-inquisitive bird continued to bug Hermione for the next week. In his quest for immortality, Voldemort had made the horcruxes. One of these had been a familiar—Nagini the snake. But for the most part, Tom Riddle had pursued the diabolical idea of investing his soul in significant inanimate objects, going further than any dark wizard before him, and transforming himself into the Dark Lord. What if Snape had been tempted to partly follow in his leader's path by also creating a familiar? If he had, the memories of it might be amongst those she had not yet examined—during his Death Eater years. Or his thoughts on the topic might be recorded in his voluminous research—nobody had yet attempted to decipher those tomes. Once he had joined the Death Eaters, Snape had encrypted his notes and had continued to do so, even after Voldemort's initial demise. Despite their likely value to the field, the subsequent Potions masters at Hogwarts certainly hadn't tried to decode those treatises. They had all been rather uninspired hacks who regurgitated the standard textbook—more inventive graduates in Potions could earn a better living free-lancing.
When a meeting for eleven was cancelled on Friday, Hermione saw her chance to do some sleuthing. She slipped down to the Department of Mysteries to consult Bob Reingold, an expert on the topic of familiars. She and Bob had touched on the topic once or twice over the many morning teas she had taken with him when she had worked as an Unspeakable. Bob had always been a goldmine of obscure information.
From these limited discussions, Hermione knew that the science of familiars was inexact and had been expunged from modern textbooks for good reasons. Initially created as companions, it had been discovered that if a witch or wizard died, they could theoretically be reanimated via their familiar, though success in doing so had been reliably documented in only a few cases. For instance, in the 8th century, Hilda Homskirk was apparently reanimated from her owl by her brilliant apprentice Annie Price, though Hilda is said to have retained talons for the rest of her life.
The creation of familiars had once been commonplace in the wizarding world, until it was understood that the process actually involved splitting of the soul and hence its degradation. Thereafter, familiars had waned in popularity and their creation had largely only been attempted by those who feared for their lives, deeming their generation an acceptable risk. Later, familiars had to be registered, like Animagi. Finally, in the 18th century, they had been completely outlawed.
Hermione remembered openly questioning Bob on why Voldemort had chosen to invest part of himself in a snake, which could at most expect to live twenty to thirty years.
"Well, the animal chosen should be one with which the wizard feels a connection," had said Bob, "similar to what ancient tribes call a 'spirit animal'. Otherwise it doesn't work very well. The process of familiar creation generally enhances the lifespan of short-lived creatures, making them more commensurate with that of the human that has adopted them, but my understanding is that it only extends the creature's life by about 50%. So I'm guessing that Nagini, had she not been despatched by Neville Longbottom, might have lived as long as forty to forty-five years. That was why You-Know-Who principally used inanimate objects, a topic that had only begun to be explored at the height of popularity of familiars," Bob had told her, "but only by the darkest wizards. Although well-chosen inanimate objects can last much longer, it was consequently shown that the ravages on the soul were even greater, which was why it was never pursued. But You-Know-Who never really valued his soul, deeming it an unnecessary human frailty. I don't suppose he can have believed in an afterlife either."
So during the week, Hermione had googled the lifespan of ravens and found it to be commensurate with snakes. She had discovered that Professor Snape had been thirty-five when he had died and had guessed that if he had created a familiar, he had likely done so after the age of fifteen, for she had already covered that earliest period of his life in the Pensieve. Assuming the bird had been a fledgling during the infusion, as recommended, it was at most 32 years of age—so it was not entirely impossible.
When Hermione walked into the almost empty tearoom of the Department of Mysteries, Bob was sitting there on his own, hunched over The Daily Prophet, looking a little balder than she remembered. The Department had undergone two more rounds of redundancy after she had departed.
"Hermione! How good to see you!" he said, looking up. "I don't suppose you have time for a cup of tea?" he tailed off somewhat pathetically. It seemed almost a plea.
"Of course, Bob," said Hermione kindly. "In fact, I came down specifically to consult you."
Bob brightened perceptibly. "Wonderful! Wonderful!" he said, jumping up in a sprightly fashion, despite his years, to fetch another cup.
He filled it from the pot in front of him with a flourish, raising and lowering the teapot to twist the stream of tea. Hermione remembered his claim that it tasted better if you did this.
"I cannot remember," said Bob, setting the pot back down. "Do you take milk or sugar?"
"Neither," replied Hermione, sitting down. Before Ron, she had taken both.
"Now," said Bob eagerly, handing the saucer to her and settling himself again. "What can I do for you?"
"I was hoping to consult you on the topic of familiars," said Hermione. "Is it possible to tell if an animal is a familiar?"
"Oh, indeed!" affirmed Bob. "In fact, that was part of standard Auror training many centuries ago, but it fell into disuse. I believe Mad-Eye Moody was the last Auror to take it as a speciality."
"Oh, is the knowledge lost or is it something I can look up in the library?" asked Hermione.
"Well, you could look it up," said Bob hesitantly, "but I'm sure I could save you a lot of time. I remember reading a wonderfully-referenced historic essay on familiars, years ago. I'm sure I could dig it up."
"Thank you," said Hermione gratefully. "I don't suppose you know—do you need the live animal or is a piece of it sufficient?—say, a feather or a hair?"
"Generally a big enough piece is sufficient. Aurors used to track renegade familiars that way. I don't think a single hair would be enough, but a handful from a comb definitely is. It just needs to be large enough for the essence to form an interpretable signature. Aurors used to carry around these little collapsible boxes, big enough to fit on the head and shoulders. You cast the spell on the object inside that and I understand a little homunculus of the wizard in question would form in a puff of blue smoke, if it did indeed come from a familiar."
"Really?" said Hermione, finishing the last of her lukewarm tea. "And do you know what that particular spell is called?"
"Oh, yes," said Bob helpfully. "It's Altera Vita. It's described in some of the old Auror manuals. Which one are you Aurors up to now?"
"The 24th edition," replied Hermione.
"Well, the early ones came out roughly once a century, so I'm guessing it should be in the 8th to 16th editions, or thereabouts. But I'm sure it says in that article I am thinking of."
"And do you know, can the spell be cast on the same object more than once?" asked Hermione.
"Oh, no," replied Bob. "It's a transformative spell, so you only get the one chance per object."
Hermione nodded with a slight grimace. She had suspected that would be the case.
"Do you perhaps have something interesting?" enquired Bob encouragingly.
"It's a bit of a stretch," admitted Hermione. "But I guess I'll know once I have the spell. I've been visited a few times by a raven that seems to have developed an interest in me."
Bob raised his eyebrows and would have gone on to enquire, but Hermione forestalled him.
"Well, I'm sorry to have to run, Bob. I was only able to slip downstairs because they cancelled a meeting. Could you send me that article by email?"
"Oh dear," said Bob in consternation. "I heard you Aurors are using that Muggle thing now. I'm afraid we don't use it at all down here in the Department of Mysteries."
Hermione could have rolled her eyes. Email, or at least the wizarding version of it, had been introduced into the ministry a good five years ago as part of productivity improvements instigated by the new minister, Justin Finch-Fletchley, shortly after he had been promoted from his position as Professor of Muggle Studies at Hogwarts. It reminded her once again just why she had left the department.
"Would an owl and another cup of tea do?" asked Bob.
Hermione smiled in affirmation and thanked him for his trouble.
Apparently, the article was a little harder to source than Bob had anticipated, because when Friday drew to a close, no owl had yet arrived at Hermione's office. Nor had the raven reappeared at Lavender's apartment. As she packed some dull routine reports she had to sign off on into her backpack for her usual weekend work, Hermione suddenly felt restless. Just what had she achieved this week?
During her visit to Hogwarts earlier in the week, Professor McGonagall had invited her to attend the Quidditch match on Saturday—Gryffindor was playing Hufflepuff in the quarter finals. Hermione had declined, citing too much work. But now she reconsidered. If Professor McGonnagall was at the match, Hermione should be able to use the Pensieve in her office…
Making her decision, Hermione scribbled a note on a piece of parchment and headed up to the owlery before leaving the building.
Heading home, she picked up a samosa and a plastic container of rose water lassi at the Indian take away on the corner, to take back to Lavender's flat.
Sitting on the sofa in Lavender's lounge room, Hermione had just finished going through the first ten reports when she saw an owl approaching the railing of the balcony, likely with Professor McGonagall's anticipated reply.
Jumping up to let it in, Hermione was surprised when, instead of landing, the owl set up a great screeching, flapping its wings. Able to see there appeared to be some sort of altercation, Hermione grabbed her broom before opening the door, expecting to dispatch a neighbourhood cat. But as she turned the handle, Hermione saw a raven fly off—her raven.
She said some soothing words to the owl—a great Snowy, just like Hedwig, Harry's first owl—then let it past her into the flat. She glanced around outside to see if any additional raven feathers had been dislodged in the altercation, but none were in evidence.
Sighing, Hermione looked back inside, noting that she had been clearly visible in the lounge room from the balcony—she had not drawn the curtains. She wondered how long the raven had been there. Indeed, if she hadn't recently seen the raven during the day, perhaps that was because it had begun visiting her at night…
The owl was perched on the back of one of Lavender's straight-backed dining chairs. It held out its leg, proffering the message. Professor McGonnagall was all accommodation.
Hermione only got through two more reports before deciding to go to bed. She wanted to be fresh for the Penseive tomorrow.
She showered, wrapped a towel round herself, and walked into the guest bedroom to retrieve some underwear from her suitcase. Hermione was about to slip on the knickers when she realised the curtains were open. Normally, she didn't bother to close them: her window faced the windowless brick wall of the adjoining building and she preferred to be woken by the morning light. But then Hermione remembered there was a tree out there. She walked over and flicked the blackout curtains shut.
Maybe after several years in the department, she was finally beginning to think like an Auror.
The flight up to Hogwarts the next day was not as enjoyab It was raining lightly when Hermione set off early, just before daybreak, and it got worse as she flew north. Had it not been the weekend, she might have opted for the Hogwarts Express instead. Hermione found it difficult keeping the broom in the air while performing a shield charm against the rain when her thoughts wandered occasionally. She would slap the shield charm back on immediately whenever the cold rain hit her face like so many splinters of ice, but her broom dipped infinitesimally every time she did so. The rain was set in all the way from London to Hogwarts. What fun they would have on the Quidditch pitch today!
Hermione landed on the front steps again, carefully avoiding a puddle. She was applying a drying spell to her broom in the entrance hall when Professor McGonnagall emerged from the Great Hall, having evidently just finished breakfast.
"Ah! Hermione! What good timing! Dreadful weather! What a relief to be sitting in the stands today, instead of being on a broom! I still shiver when I think of my last game against Ravenclaw in 1954. Were you wet through by the time you landed?"
"I managed to keep up a shield charm most of the way, though my mind did lapse occasionally," admitted Hermione.
"For three hours?" mused Professor McGonagall. "That's impressive concentration."
After revealing the spiralling staircase with yet another Gaelic-sounding password that Hermione did not quite catch—possibly 'bannock'—McGonagall was soon ushering her guest into the office.
"So I believe you were up to vial XII, my dear. I put a few extra vials out—who knows how long this match will go on—and I notified the house elves that you will be requiring lunch in here, should the game extend beyond noon."
"Thank you, Professor McGonnagall."
"Well, thank your friend Harry Potter. If he had not had those occlumency lessons with Professor Snape, we would never have had this wonderful resource to allow us to understand Severus. I must admit it was very illuminating cataloguing these memories. So sad, that Severus is no longer with us. He would only have been 48 this year, had he lived."
"Yes," agreed Hermione. "Too many people's lives were wasted in that dark time."
She hesitated for a moment before plunging on. "I don't suppose you noticed anything that might indicate Professor Snape made a familiar when you were cataloguing his thoughts, Professor?"
"A familiar?" repeated Minerva. "Is there any good reason to believe he made one? They're illegal, you know."
"It was just a hunch," admitted Hermione. "I have nothing concrete."
"No, I can remember nothing like that," mused Professor McGonagall. "Though I suspect he would have modified such a memory because of the legality issue."
"Blurred it like Professor Slughorn did, do you mean?"
"Oh, no. Severus was never a revisionist like Horace Slughorn. He tended to wind his secrets in on themselves, so they flit past you in the Pensieve and are more elusive to catch. I did encounter a few such memories," said Professor McGonagall, before lowering her voice. "They tended to be… sexual in nature."
"Oh," said Hermione, blushing slightly.
"Very well," said McGonagall briskly, buttoning on a tartan mackintosh. "I'll leave you to it. Let's hope Perkins has ironed out the hiccups in the new Gryffindor lineup since the last practice I saw. Hufflepuff are very good this year."
And with that she was off.
Clearing her mind, Hermione approached the Pensieve, poured vial XII into the bowl and immersed her head. The memories swirled past her like oddly-shaped jellyfish, vaguely reminiscent of those horrible brains in the Department of Mysteries. She touched the nearest with her wand. There was a wave of nausea as she felt herself falling.
She joined the memories one by one. They were from the last of Snape's student days, before he went off to join Voldemort. But they included the disturbing bullying incident involving James Potter that Harry had already described to her. It was unnerving to see someone who resembled Harry so closely be that nasty. She supposed jealous rivalry brought out the worst in men. Hermione could only imagine the effect seeing this aspect of his father must have had on Harry.
After sampling the same memories several times, Hermione began to recognise the distinctive shapes of each as they flitted past. Thus it was that she finally noticed one that seemed small and compact, forming a type of satellite of another memory which she had already viewed. She had to tease it apart from the larger memory with the tip of her wand before she could view it. Excited she might have found something relevant to the creation of the familiar, Hermione immersed herself in it, and found herself in a bathroom.
As a former prefect, it didn't take Hermione long to recognise it. It was the same bathroom where she had bathed many times as a senior and also, incidentally, where Harry had opened the mysterious golden egg during the Triwizard Tournament. It was about as far from the clinical white Muggle bathroom in Lavender's new flat as one could imagine, being something like a miniature Turkish bath, lit dimly with flickering candlelight from a chandelier that did not reach the shadows.
As Hermione watched, the door opened and a girl with long reddish hair walked in. There was something familiar about her, but she couldn't be a Weasley—there had been none at the school at that time. Putting the satchel she was carrying down on a bench, the girl kicked off her shoes and began to undress. After she pulled her robes over her head, Hermione heard a gasp in the shadows close beside her and realised there was someone lurking nearby. A quick glance to the side failed to penetrate the gloom, so, feeling a bit like a voyeur, Hermione turned back to the bath to watch the sylph-like girl remove her bra and underwear, still trying to place her. Fortunately for Hermione's sensibilities, the girl had turned away, so only her pert bottom was visible. Hermione wished she would turn her profile towards her again, for she felt that might have been what had spurred the jolt of recognition.
Around the same time, Hermione became aware that her companion was making a rhythmic movement beside her in the shadows, but she was too focussed on identifying the girl stepping into the bath to pay much heed. It was only when the girl relaxed backwards to float in the water to reveal a pair of generous breasts, causing her unseen companion to give a protracted groan, that Hermione realised what was going on. Recognition and context snapped together with a jolt. She believed the girl in the bath could be none other than Lily Potter and that Snape, hiding in the shadows, was pleasuring himself while he watched her. He was gasping so frequently now that Hermione was sure he must have cast a muffliato spell, otherwise Lily would have heard him. Hermione was thoroughly disgusted, but waited patiently for the conclusion of the memory, hoping that Lily would find Snape on her emergence from the bath. Hermione shuddered as he climaxed beside her and felt the bile rise briefly in her mouth. It reminded her of Ron's selfish love-making that had frequently made her feel like a blow-up doll.
The memory wavered a little and Hermione thought it was about to end with no obvious conclusion, when it refocused and Hermione realised that a little time had passed, which Snape had not bothered to remember. Lily stepped dripping from the bath and reached for a towel. Then Snape was off, at it again, as Lily towelled herself dry. Hermione wished she could have reached out and slapped him. Finally, he gasped and shuddered again as Lily pulled on a dressing gown and wrapped a fresh towel around her head.
Stowing her uniform into the satchel, Lily dropped a pair of slippers to the floor and slid her feet into them. Then she draped the handle of the satchel over her shoulder and proceeded to the locked door.
Snape emerged from the shadows. Pulling an invisibility cloak about him, he quickly proceeded in Lily's wake. He was too tall for the cloak, so Hermione was able to see his shoes, but as he neared the door, he seemed to stoop down so they were covered. Feeling her presence pulled along beside him, Hermione heard a familiar voice ahead and realised Lily was exchanging pleasantries with someone in the corridor. But before Snape could emerge into the corridor, this person loomed in the doorway, running into Snape. There was a startled gasp, then Hermione felt as if someone had grabbed both her shoulders and pushed her bodily back into the room. The door was slammed behind them, and the invisibility cloak pulled roughly away.
"James! This is beneath you!" remonstrated the newcomer. "I never thought I would ever catch you…"
With a gasp of recognition, Hermione recognised a young Lupin. Tears sprang to her eyes as she remembered her last sight of him, lying dead beside Tonks in the Great Hall after the Battle of Hogwarts.
"Snape!" cried Lupin, realising his mistake. "What are you doing in here and why have you got James' invisibility cloak?"
"It is not James' invisibility cloak!" spluttered Snape. "It is mine! And I have every right to be in here. I am a prefect, just like you!"
Lupin rubbed the material of the invisibility cloak between his fingers experimentally. Now that Hermione stared at it, she could see that it had imperfections and seemed to be heavier and coarser than the cloak Harry possessed.
"That still doesn't explain why you are in here," said Remus in a quiet voice, "when Lily Potter has just walked out."
"She came in as I was about to leave and locked the door," Snape said defensively. "She didn't see me because I was wearing the invisibility cloak."
"And why would you be wearing an invisibility cloak in a bathroom?" posed Lupin.
"You know very well that Potter and Black are in the habit of ambushing me! They could have very well been lurking behind the statue of Boris the Bewildered!" Snape protested, a little too stridently.
Lupin looked definitely suspicious. "So why did you not announce yourself, as would have been the right thing to do?"
"I don't know," stuttered Snape, looking decidedly worried. "I was embarrassed."
Lupin looked at him in disbelief. "I had no idea you even bathed, Severus. But let me say this, I think you should take showers from now on. If I should ever see you in, or even near, this bathroom, I believe I may have to tell the headmaster about this incident. Is that clear?"
"Yes," growled Snape, in an astonishingly aggressive manner for a man who had just got off scot-free from a remarkably dodgy incident. Then he snatched the invisibility cloak from Remus's hand and fled.
The memory dissolved.
Hermione raised her head from the bowl and tried to clear her mind. That memory was definitely one she could have done without! How disappointing it had turned out to be nothing relevant! However, at least she understood now how to recognise the concealed memories. Perhaps some had even been missed in the Death Eater years by other Aurors! She looked at the clock—one thirty! How time had flown!
She glanced around and saw a plate of sandwiches and a glass of pumpkin juice had been left on a tray on the headmaster's desk.
She hurried over to have lunch, feeling enormously hungry.
"Those sandwiches must be a little dry by now," remarked one of the portraits drolly.
"They're not too bad," returned Hermione conversationally, taking a swig of pumpkin juice to compensate. "I gather the quidditch match is still ongoing?"
"400-300 in Hufflepuff's favour. The snitch seems very evasive today. I think someone must have snuck in an international grade one as a joke."
There didn't seem much to say in reply to this, so Hermione ate her sandwiches in silence as some of the errant thoughts that had intruded on the flight to Hogwarts recurred. She had read recently in The Daily Prophet that Victor Krum had divorced, two years after his retirement from competitive Quidditch. She had briefly thought of dropping him a line before remembering his possessive nature. She sighed. Perhaps a working witch like herself, dedicated to her endeavours, was better off alone. After all, she had put off having children with Ron to get her career on track. He had resented it when she had changed departments to the Aurors, effectively hitting the reset button on the baby-making timeline.
Having finished her sandwiches, Hermione returned to the Pensieve, to fish out the memories with her wand and return them one by one to vial XII.
She had only just completed doing this when she heard the rumble of the spiral stairs and Minerva McGonnagall walked into the room.
"Who won?" asked Hermione, fearing it was bad news for Gryffindor.
"Well, we got there in the end," said Minerva with a sigh, as she stretched her mackintosh out on the coat rack to dry. "410-400. But it was a near-run thing. Hufflepuff's goalkeeper was excellent today, but their Seeker was having trouble in the rain. The Gryffindor Seeker had to pretend not to see the Snitch several times, since we were behind. But the team finally wore the Hufflepuff goalkeeper out and she let a few more in. Then the Snitch reappeared when we were 20 behind and Mohanasundaram nailed it. A very close game.
"Did you have any luck?" McGonagall asked, coming forward.
"Well, I did find one concealed memory, but it turned out to be one of the ones you mentioned—of the Prefect's bathroom."
"Oh," said McGonagall, stifling a remarkably girlish giggle. "Yes, well. Lucky that it was Lupin who found him. Remus was always a decent chap. Severus would have been expelled had that come to the headmaster's attention—a sad end to the education of a brilliant student. I think that must have occurred in Snape's fifth year. In his sixth year, James would have got access to the bathroom himself, as captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. I shudder to think what would have occurred if it had been James rather than Lupin who had discovered Severus.
"How much more have you to get through in the Pensieve?"
"I believe I've completed Vial XII. Thank you for the tip about the repressed memories, I might not have spotted that one had I not been on the lookout. I'm now interested in revisiting the memories that were previously viewed by other Aurors, in case something was missed."
"Well, feel free to make use of my office for the rest of the afternoon," said McGonagall, picking up a blackened kettle and putting it on the hob. "Would you like some tea before I go off?"
"Oh, I couldn't deprive you of your office any longer, Professor," protested Hermione. "I probably should be getting back to London."
"You surely don't intend to fly back in that maelstrom do you?" exclaimed McGonagall. "It's got worse. I'm not sure your average shield charm will be effective against it."
Hermione climbed the few steps to the mini book-lined gallery that lined the walls of the office, to peer through a slit-like gothic window that looked out onto the grounds. She saw that it had indeed got as dark as twilight, and the sleet seemed to be almost falling sideways rather than down. She shivered involuntarily.
"Sometimes I wish we were properly connected to the floo network," remarked McGonnagall. "But on the whole, I believe it was wise of Professor Dumbledore to partially dismantle it as a protection against You-Know-Who. Even though he is gone, the students are no doubt safer from all sorts of intrusions and illicit expeditions."
McGonagall cast a spell to magically warm the pretty transferware teapot, then got down an ancient tea canister and unlocked it with a key on a chatelaine that dangled from her waist.
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "I'm aware that tea was once a valuable commodity. Is that some especially precious blend?"
McGonnagall looked slightly abashed. "Peeves had taken to flinging it around the headmaster's office when I was absent. Apparently Fawkes kept him at bay during Dumbledore's term in office."
Hermione had a vision of the magnificent phoenix darting around the office in pursuit of Peeves and found it difficult reconciling such a comic episode with the dignity of Dumbledore's office.
She looked up at Dumbledore's portrait, but it was vacant.
"He doesn't come back often?" Hermione asked.
"No," said McGonagall resignedly. "A friend of his took one of his portraits to Pago Pago, and he apparently spends most of his time there."
Minerva poured the boiling water into the pot, then extracted some shortbread from a tartan tin and set it onto a matching plate beside it.
"Why don't you stay for the night?" suggested McGonnagall. "Doreen Fuller will have to spend the night in the hospital wing. She was concussed by a bludger just as Madame Hooch blew the whistle. So the Gryffindor girl's senior dormitory will be empty tonight. You could sleep in your former bed."
For some reason, Hermione found this offer extraordinarily tempting, but she happened to glance at the headmaster's desk, where two large baskets of what looked like assignments resided.
"You look like you have a lot of marking to be getting on with," said Hermione. "Unfortunately, I didn't bring any work with me."
McGonagall sighed in agreement as she poured the tea. "You know, I've been thinking of instituting 'peer marking', like they do in some Muggle schools—the drivel that some of the students write often does seem like a waste of parchment—but some old-fashioned part of me just won't allow me to do it. Perhaps I need to get with the times—the real test is whether they can actually transfigure objects. The assignments are just there to try to force them to do the necessary reading."
Hermione nodded in sympathy as she dipped the end of her shortbread in her tea. She remembered correcting some of the nonsense Harry and Ron had written on their assignments.
"But wait, I'm forgetting," said McGonagall. "You were wanting to look at Professor Snape's notebooks as well… I did enquire about them. I had originally hoped to have a go at decoding them myself, but the demands of the headmaster's office proved too much. Then I ran out of shelf space in here; I had them shifted down to the Potions Dungeon when the second fellow started. He was sadly disappointing… a good talker—much in the style of Gilderoy Lockhart—breezed through the interview, but turned out to be absolutely hopeless at anything practical… actually set the dungeon on fire. We might have lost Professor Snape's work if not for some quick-thinking students. Then the volumes went up to the library. I believe Madame Pince considered putting them in the restricted section until she decided they were of little use in their encrypted state. But she advised me this morning at breakfast, she's had them brought up from the stack."
For Hermione it was the clincher. "Oh, thank you! Viewing them would be a valuable use of my time."
They turned to more mundane topics over the tea and inevitably the subject of Ron came up.
"I hope you are managing to keep your spirits up, my dear," said McGonagall, sympathetically. "You went through so much together. I know there must have been a close bond there. But to be truthful, I never felt Ronald was worthy of you. I had rather hoped you and Harry might hit it off. Neither of those boys had your intelligence, of course, but I felt Harry, at least, has enormous purity of heart."
Hermione produced a grimaced smile, which she hoped conveyed gratitude for the sympathy. Then she set down her cup—this was not a topic she wished to discuss, it was all too raw. "I had better make a start on those notebooks. I'm under no illusions that it's going to be easy cracking them. Did you have any tips?"
Minerva nodded in understanding, then drew out her wand and muttered 'Accio' along with a few keywords that included 'Severus Snape'. The drawer of a wooden filing cabinet flew open and several rolls of parchment flitted out like so many birds to her outstretched hand.
"Let me see," said McGonagall, scanning the pages. "So, I got as far as realising the notebooks are of two types: a set of eighteen journals—one for each year—covering the time from when Severus graduated from Hogwarts to near his death. The last one finishes when he was headmaster, at the time he fled the school.
"The other volumes, numbering ten, which I call 'treatises', are on more specific topics. Severus seemed to set aside ten pages for each topic, then continued the topic in further sections, as necessary. The first treatise contains an index, which I copied onto this second piece of parchment."
She held the relevant page out for Hermione. "You see, he was very interested in three specific topics, which were carried through multiple sections. I never worked out what they were, but if he did create a familiar, perhaps what you are seeking will be there. It's very obscure magic and would have required a lot of research beforehand, unless he learned it firsthand from You-Know-Who. But I somehow doubt the latter. I believe You-Know-Who guarded his knowledge even more closely than Dumbledore did. Dragons—that's what my father used to call them—wizards who sit on their knowledge like so much gold, not sharing it."
Hermione nodded. Dumbledore's failure to communicate more to guide Harry on their quest for the Horcruxes had always bothered Hermione, and his remarkable prescience in guessing how each chip would fall had been somewhat unnerving.
Yet, the good angel Hermione imagined sitting on her right shoulder during her internal struggles prompted her response: "But surely, Professor Dumbledore's secrecy was driven by exigency?" she proffered, "—he feared the mental connection Harry had with Voldemort would prove too much for him."
"Perhaps," said McGonagall reservedly, "but it did make one feel as if one was no more than a chess piece in a game being played between Dumbledore and You-Know-Who."
Hermione nodded again. Minerva had encapsulated her feelings exactly. "Thank you," she said, taking the pages and getting up. "I probably would have spent hours just getting to this stage."
"My pleasure," said McGonagall. "The Muggle weather bureau says it should clear by tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps we could have lunch together here in my office before you head back to London? I would love to hear an update."