Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Madrigal	By : Rotisserie_Cassowary Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 7982 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
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I sat at there my workbench far longer than I’d like to admit, obsessively running what I’d seen over and over in my mind. She certainly hadn’t been repelled by me, though she had been quite scared. She was thinking about what your chest felt like. That’s not something a student does… a traitorous voice whispered. Her heart was beating even harder than yours. She couldn’t take her hands off you…
No. No. She was just stunned. She froze like a rabbit who’s spotted a fox. She was brimming with fear. She’s terrified of you. Just because she wants to learn from you doesn’t mean she wants to be anywhere near you. She fought to stay because she’s so dedicated to the cause. Which, by the way, you should be too. When’s the last time you even thought about Lily? Thought about why you’re in this goddamn mess to begin with? Stop obsessing about a little girl, you fucking pervert, and get your shit together.
Many hours later I dragged myself, exhausted from self-flagellation, into my bedroom. Hardly knowing what I was doing, I lit a fire and stretched out across the chaise. A sweet, herbal scent lingered on the fabric where I laid my head. A sense of peace unfurled throughout my entire being, and I thought no more until morning.
I awoke with a raging hard-on, something that hadn’t happened to me in over a decade. Wondering what the hell I could’ve been dreaming about to inspire such a thing, I subjected myself to a painfully cold shower and a half-dozen futile attempts to meditate my unwelcome thoughts away. When I arrived at the Great Hall that morning, I berated myself as my eyes immediately went to the Gryffindor table. My heart leapt into my throat when I saw her. Jesus you are fucking pathetic, I berated myself. Hermione was sitting there with her two pet dunderheads, laughing at some sort of story they were telling her. I got a sudden overwhelming urge to knock their stupid, over-large heads together. And then, oh gods, she looked up like she could sense me watching her. She blessed me with a radiant smile, and I just fucking pretended like I hadn’t seen her.
I felt sick to my stomach all day and couldn’t bring myself to eat, but I still went to every meal. I just sat there and watched her out of the corner of my eye the entire time like a fucking prowler. I noticed she picked over her food too, and spoke to the boys far less frequently than usual. I worried that I had upset her, then cursed myself for even caring about upsetting a student. By the time 7:55 rolled around, I was so full of adrenaline that it was all I could do to keep still. I took many calming breaths and tried to look busy for when she arrived.
“Good evening, Professor.” Gods, she is utter perfection.
“Good evening, Miss Granger. Shall we begin?”
I settled into the enormous couch and beckoned her over. She sat next to me, far closer than I’d expected, yet not nearly close enough. “What does the human mind look like?” I inquired, turning my upper body to face her.
She gave me a startled look then giggled a bit. “I don’t know… Are we talking medically or metaphysically?”
“Metaphysically.”
“Well I know what I’ve read from memoirs of famous Legilimens and text book definitions of Legilimency. But I’ve also read that what someone sees in a person’s mind is highly subjective. Everyone’s brain works differently; therefore, how they visualize another person’s mind is actually more a reflection of the viewer than the viewed. Does that make sense?”
“I understand what you’re getting at. In the majority of cases, what a Legilimens experiences when they dive into another’s mind is a confusing blur of moving images, sounds, scents, and emotions. It takes a skilled and practiced Legilimens to sort through this cacophony, and there are any number of methods they might use to do so. Some people use sheer force, hurting you until you show them what they want. The Dark Lord favors this approach, as you might have guessed. Some use an empathetic approach, remembering a feeling or experience from their own life, and using that to attract similar memories out of the murk.”
“Which approach do you use, Sir?”
“I use my own method, one that’s unique to myself, as far as I know. When I dive into a mind, I visualize an infinite 4-dimensional piece of fabric. It’s all around me, under me, inside me, everywhere. And the endlessly complex colors and designs represent the person’s emotions and thoughts. The more time I spend in a person’s mind, the better I’m able to read the patterns and understand what their individual colors represent. And when I want to find a certain memory, I only have to concentrate on a given portion of the fabric. If I want to look at something more closely, I simply give that thread a tug. If I want to find similar memories, I need only reel in the thread, and more will come to me,” I shrugged nonchalantly, as if I weren’t actually ridiculously proud of this technique that I’d diligently perfected over many years of practice. “It can be quite effective.”
“Wow,” she breathed, “that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.” It was all I could do not to beam at her praise. “You’ve literally fixed Legilimency! And no one even knows about this??”
“I suppose not,” I shrugged. “It’s not like I can go to the Daily Prophet and say, ‘Check out this skill I developed interrogating the Dark Lord’s prisoners!’ They tend to frown upon those sorts of things. And who knows if my method would even work for other people? Maybe there’s something particular about my mind that allows me to create these advanced visualizations. Maybe I’m just that good of a manipulator... Who knows?”
“So not that I don’t find this completely fascinating, because I do, but aren’t I here to learn Occlumency? Why are you telling me so much about Legilimency?”
“Occlumency and Legilimency are but two sides of the same coin, Miss Granger. You can’t have a comprehensive understanding of one without the other. I didn’t teach Potter Legilimency because he’s a hot-headed imbecile who I don’t trust poking about in my mind. You can easily do serious damage to a person’s psyche, often without even meaning to. In so many ways, he was doomed to failure from the start. You can’t effectively defend against an attack you don’t understand.”
“So I’m going to learn Legilimency too?”
“Yes. And if I have my way, you’re going to be the best goddamn Legilimens and Occlumens alive,” I proclaimed with quiet passion, surprising even myself with the sentiment. “You are no longer simply a potions apprentice, Miss Granger. You are my apprentice... I will give you all the skills and tools I possibly can, laboring in every conceivable way, to ensure that you live to see the end of the war.” I stared fiercely into her eyes, and I saw it reflected back ten-fold.
“We’re both going to see the end of this war, Master Snape. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Now there’s the Gryffindor warrior I’ve been looking for...”
- 9
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- 11
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Madrigal