Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Gravity	By : Slytherins-Quill Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Het - Male/Female Views: 7073 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. No money is being made from the posting of this story & no copyright/trademark infringement is intended.

Chapter List
- 2
- 3
A/N: Ok, so here is the second chapter! Thanks to everyone who’s been reading and those of you leaving reviews. Your comments have all been greatly appreciated. As I mentioned in my first posting this us un-beta’d so I apologise for any mistakes I may have over looked. I hope you all continue to enjoy the story as it progresses, let me know what you think.
Enjoy

~Quill

*********************************************************

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoat Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

*********************************************************

Chapter Two

Rosalie looked around the room that someone had thoughtfully set up for her at some point throughout the day. It was still mostly empty despite the fact that her things had been retrieved from the Privet Drive at some point and kindly put away. In fact, there was little to show that the room belonged to anyone, save her firebolt leaning up against the wall in one corner and Hedwig’s cage resting on the desk. It was impersonal and lifeless; a perfect mirror of her own disjointed emotions. There, but hollow. A shell.
Rosalie sighed and sunk down onto the edge of her bed. It was well past dark out and the house was filled with long shadows and a silence that rang in her ears. She couldn’t believe a whole day had passed already. It had seemed to both crawl by and fly far too quickly. An odd mixture of long periods of idleness broken up by quick burst of activity and a constant stream of people in an out of her peripheries: Madame Pomfrey, Dumbledore, Snape, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Mrs Weasley. Her two best friends seemed to be at odds with her apathy and she wondered why no one had told them what she’d done.
Standing up abruptly, she interrupted her own stream of thought by moving across the room to Hedwig’s cage, pulling out some owl treats in an effort to distract herself. She didn’t want to think anymore. She didn’t want to remember or feel, but even the silence seemed accusatory.
When it wasn’t bustling with Order members coming and going as they pleased, Grimmauld Place was almost unnaturally quiet. Of course, she suspected the only reason that wasn’t the case was because Dumbledore wasn’t currently in residence, but it felt like she was the only one around with Ron, Hermione and the Weasley’s having left for the day. She wasn’t though. She knew for a fact that Madame Pomfrey was still working down in her makeshift infirmary; Dudley Dursley still reluctantly stuck under her dutiful care, no doubt.
The thought made her shudder.
The idea of a Dursley—any Dursley—in her world felt wrong and vaguely threatening and she felt the urge to ejected him from it with all haste.
‘You’re the reason he’s here in the first place, though, aren’t you,’ a nasty voice whispered in her mind, ‘you’re the reason his parent’s are dead. You might as well let yourself choke on that too while you’re drowning yourself in guilt over the other man you killed.’
Rosalie swallowed heavily and looked down at her hands. She could still feel the heat of the man’s blood as it slid over her skin and half expected to see it there still, staining her hands red as though it had seeped in through her pores to settle itself just beneath the surface. They were clean and dry, however, their colour a natural looking pink.
She balled up her hands into fists and shoved them behind her back. She should go check on Dudley, she thought. Make sure that he’s okay, that’s he’s not too badly injured and that he was coping. It was the least she could do. He was family after all, and now neither of them had all that much in the way of family left, even if they did hate one another.
Rosalie looked up in surprise as she realized suddenly that she was standing in front of Madame Pomfrey’s door, that her feet had carried her there subconsciously while she’d been lost in thought.
Rosalie swallowed heavily and for a moment she could do no more than stare at it uncertainly, unsure suddenly if she truly wanted to go through with it. She was probably the last person Dudley wanted to see, despite the fact she was his cousin and the only familiar face to him here at Grimmauld Place. She was the reason his parents were dead, after all. He was probably scared out of his mind, though he’d never admit it, and she felt she owed him at least enough to check on him. She knew most of Dudley’s hatred of the wizarding world was due to the fear of it his parents had instilled in him since birth and being in an unfamiliar—and decidedly creepy—magical environment was probably more than he could take right at that moment.
Taking a deep breath, she reached haltingly for the handle and slipped inside.
Where there had once been a reasonably sized sitting room, there was now a room set up to act as a makeshift hospital wing in a pinch. There were a couple of beds spaced evenly along the walls and a desk in one corner where Madame Pomfrey could work and keep an eye on her patients at the same time. There was a bookshelf set up against one wall stacked full of potions, creams and remedies, and a large fireplace against the other wall big enough to keep the whole room warm at night. It was nothing like the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts, but it was functional and stocked well enough for Madame Pomfrey to make do in emergencies; at least until something more permanent could be arranged.
The mediwitch was nowhere in sight though, as Rosalie slipped into the room. The curtains were drawn tightly across the windows, the only light in the room coming from a softly burning oil lantern on the mediwitch’s desk due to the fact that it was summer and warm enough out not to warrant having the fire burning overnight. Yet even in the dim lighting the boy lying in the bed in the far corner of the room was hard to miss. His rotund shape bludged up out of the bedding like a strange looking growth in the shadows of the night, his snores ripping through the peaceful silence of the room like Uncle Vernon’s old chainsaw.
Rosalie couldn’t help but wonder if his sleep was natural or potion-induced. How had he reacted when he’d learnt of his parents’ deaths? It was hard to think of Dudley as anything other than the self-absorbed, misbehaved brat his parents had raised him to be. Did he mourn their deaths as the tragedy they were? For the life which they’d been robbed of or for the impact it would have on his life? Not yet eighteen, in the muggle world he was still a minor and legally he couldn’t take control of his family’s assets. Perhaps he’d have to go live with Aunt Marge, his only other living relative that Rosalie had ever seen or heard of.
Rosalie shuddered at the thought.
As much as she’d always despised Dudley, she was sorry for what had happened, more so because it was irrefutably her fault that his parents were now dead. Death Eaters had been in their house in search of her, her relatives had just been in the way, worth less to Voldemort’s minions than the dirt beneath their feet—muggles. Perhaps if they’d never known her, or if she’d never gone to live with them, they might still be alive? Perhaps they would have ended up dying anyway?
She could picture what might have happened when Dudley had been told his parents had been killed. His face always turned red and blotchy like Uncle Vernon’s when he was angry and he’d learnt to imitate many of the man’s characteristics and gestures at a young age. She could picture his fear of the wizards surrounding him bleeding away as anger gripped him. She could imagine the furious diatribe falling from his lips in a steady stream of inelegant speech as he tried to force them to take back their words—as he attempted to bend the world to his whims until everything was right once more.
“Rosalie?”
Madame Pomfrey’s voice startled her out of her thoughts, and it was only then that she realised Dudley was no longer asleep. His beady blue eyes were staring up at her silently, cold fury blazing through their depths from where he lay.
“I’m sorry,” She whispered, barely loud enough for the apology to reach the boy’s ears.
His eyes darkened and a snarl tore across his face twisting the baby-faced features into an ugly visage of rage. He moved quicker than she could have anticipated, leaping from the bed with unexpected agility to swing his fist at her face.
His knuckles made contact with her cheekbone solidly. The blow knocking her nearly senseless as pain exploded up through one side of her face. She felt herself topple to the floor and landed on her hands and knees, facing away from him.
“Y-you murdering bitch! You FREAK!” He snarled furiously, spittle flying as he forced the words out through clenched teeth, “This is all your fault!”
“Mr. Dursley!” Madame Pomfrey snapped in horror, shock colouring her tone and her features.
Rosalie blinked rapidly, trying to clear her gaze and gingerly touched a hand to her face. Her cheek throbbed angrily under her fingers, but she couldn’t blame anyone but herself for the injury. In a way she welcomed it, as punishment for her guilt. She deserved this. Didn’t she?
“The world would be a better place if you had never been born! I hate you! I’ve always hated you, and so did my parents! I wish they’d just killed you and been done with it—”
“Immobulus!”
Rosalie didn’t move as Dudley suddenly froze, his foot bent back in mid swing with a kick that was no doubt aimed at her abdomen. She blinked up at Madame Pomfrey, however, as the mediwitch rushed over to her side quickly, turning her face this way and that with gentle hands she took in the bruise that was already forming on her face. Her cheek and jaw felt hot and puffy as it began to swell, and she could feel her pulse throbbing through her entire face.
“He’s grieving,” the mediwitch explained as she examined her face, “People say and do horrible things when the heart has been hurt. Not that I’m making excuses for him, mind you, he should never have hit you; he’ll feel rotten for it in the morning, no doubt.”
Rosalie nodded her head in half-hearted agreement, not the mood to go into the particulars of her relationship with the Dursley’s. If anything, Dudley’s resolve to do her bodily harm would have only strengthened come morning; regret would have no part in it.
“With the rate you’re going through my bruise salve, Miss Potter, I’ll have to ask Professor Snape to brew up another batch before the week is out. Though, I don’t know why that should surprise me,” The mediwitch exclaimed as she reached into her robes and pulled out the small jar, smearing the thick salve across her cheek and jaw.
“You’ll still bruise a little, I imagine, but this will take the pain away and hasten the process,” She explained with a nod, “Now, I think you’d best make yourself scarce before I re-awaken Mr. Dursley.”
Rosalie nodded and climbed to her feet, moving quickly towards the door, not sure if she’d accomplished whatever it was that had motivated her to seek her cousin out the first place. Her guilt had not abated, nor did she feel any better at having given Dudley the opportunity to get some of his own back. What was a knock to the face when she’d basically murdered his parents? If nothing else, though, she knew now that Dudley was fine and she resolved not to go back to see him again. If he wanted to see her, he could come find her, her responsibility, as far as she was concerned, for that Dursley had ended.

*

Severus hovered in the kitchen doorway with reluctant curiosity to watch the strange ritual that seemed to be taking place before him. Potter, bent over the kitchen bench scrubbing at the counter top furiously, a bucket of what he assumed was soapy water beside her on the bench, single-mindedly intent upon her task—muggle cleaning.
Frowning, Severus glanced at the muggle clock that had been installed on the wall—a recent addition to the Black Family home the original owners would have loathed, no doubt. It had gone midnight, and the rest of the house was still and silent. Indeed, Severus had thought himself to be the only one still awake. He slept infrequently, existing from day to day on little more than a few hours here and there. It was rare that he could relax enough to allow his body to descend into full sleep and rarely outside of his own heavily warded quarters at Hogwarts.
He found himself curious, however, as to the purpose of this late night cleaning frenzy Potter seemed to be engaged in. It could, of course, simply be a punishment for some offence. He often used manual labour as a punishment in his detentions, thought it seemed an unlikely scenario in this setting.
“May I inquire as to what you are doing exactly?”
The girl spun around to face him; startled, it appeared, by his sudden presence. Her long dark hair was tied back into a loose ponytail, bits of hair escaping to frame her face haphazardly giving her a harried look. She had a smudge of dirt on her cheek and she looked tired and strained, her wide green eyes dulled with fatigue.
“Professor, I didn’t hear you come in! I didn’t realise anyone else was in the house!” She admitted, her hand still clutching the scrubbing brush she’d been using, soap suds dripping from her hand onto the floor.
“You thought the Headmaster would leave you unattended?” Severus asked, his eyebrow cocked in mocking disdain, “Please, Potter. With your propensity for getting yourself into trouble you’re lucky you’re not walking around with an armed guard dogging your every step.”
Rosalie recognized his dry humour, but was in no mood to reciprocate or appreciate it and had to fight against the urge to glare back at him, “I only meant that I thought it was only myself and Madame Pomfrey left in the house... and my cousin, I guess.”
Severus’ frown deepened as he took note of the swelling to the left side of her face and the bruising which now marred her cheek and soft underside of her eye. It was fading purple colour which told him she’d already been to see Madame Pomfrey, but the swelling would still take a few hours to recede.
“Who hit you?”
Rosalie glanced away, before turning her back on him completely to return to her scrubbing.
“It’s nothing.”
“I didn’t ask whether or not it was ‘nothing’, I asked you who hit you. You have a black eye, Miss Potter, are you going to tell me you walked into a door? Or perhaps you ‘fell’? Those stairs do look quite treacherous,” Severus asked mockingly.
Rosalie shook her head, “Really Professor—”
“I want to know who hit you, Potter?” The Potions Master pushed, “Was it Weasley?”
Rosalie spun around again, “What?! You think Ron hit me?”
“Did he?” Severus asked flatly, his eyes brooking no room for argument or evasion.
“No! Of course not! Ron would never! It was my cousin, okay?” She replied with forced nonchalance, “I went to see him in Madame Pomfrey’s infirmary. He is upset—grieving—over my Aunt and Uncle.”
Severus arched an eyebrow, “And because of this, he hit you.”
Rosalie shrugged, “He blames me for their deaths and he’s right to; it was my fault Death Eaters were there in the first place after all.”
“That is ridiculous,” Severus replied in his ‘are you really as stupid as you look’ tone, “You did not wield the wand that ended their lives, nor did the curse fall from your lips. Their blood is not on your hands. This war will tear plenty of people’s lives apart, Potter, some hitting closer to home than others. If you continue to persist in feeling guilty for things you have had no part in, you will drive yourself insane and be of little use to the people that still need you.”
Rosalie huffed in disagreement, “They would have never been targets if I hadn’t been sent to live with them! They weren’t given a choice in the matter and from day one they made it clear that they never wanted me because they were afraid of something like this happening. I am the reason they are dead!”
“That does not make you guilty of their murder,” Severus counted, “We are at war, Potter, and people die. Many will even die for you, no doubt. Yes, the Death Eater’s came for you and had you known and done nothing, then maybe you could consider yourself complicit in their actions. As it stands, you are not. You’re merely putting yourself through pain you need not endure.”
Rosalie shook her head, “And what of the other man, the Death Eater I did kill? Surely you don’t think I’m blameless there.”
“It is not an issue of blame. As far as I’m concerned you put down an animal, not a man,” Severus snarled.
Rosalie didn’t respond.
Severus sighed and allowed himself to continue in a calmer tone, “It is true that every life you take weighs on you and you will need to find your own way to work through the emotions that are no doubt battering at you relentlessly. Yet, you did not kill an innocent man, Potter, and you did not kill him in cold blood. You killed him in self defence and I can promise you, had you not, he would have done you far worse.”
Rosalie shivered.
“It’s late,” He continued sternly after a moment, “You should be in bed. You’re training, with any luck, will begin tomorrow and it is imperative you are well rested.”
“I can’t,” She told him plainly, turning back her task, “I don’t sleep all that well.”
“Presently, you’re not even trying. If you require a sleeping draught, Madame Pomfrey would be more than happy to supply you with some, I’m sure,” He replied.
She shook her head emphatically, “They don’t work. They only make it worse. If I sleep, I’ll dream and I don’t want to dream.”
Severus eyed her appraisingly. Nightmares. It wasn’t surprising given everything the girl had seen. He suffered them too. Even so, he tested her Occlumency shield surreptitiously and nodded in satisfaction when he found them intact.
“There is always Dreamless Sleep,” he told her.
“Dreamless Sleep is addictive,” she argued, “and I would need to be taking it all the time for it to be any use. Anyway, I had some last night to help me sleep. I feel fine.”
Severus watched a shudder pass over her and he thought, perhaps, that that was the real problem. People coming down off Dreamless Sleep often found themselves wired and jumpy the next evening, added to the fact that she was more than likely afraid to go to sleep after what had happened the previous night and you were left with a slightly manic, overly strained Potter. How did he always seem to find himself in these situations? More than once over the last year he’d found himself in the role of counsellor to the girl, though certainly not by choice—hers or his—and every time he’d been given no warning. He cursed Dumbledore silently for perhaps the millionth time. If he hadn’t insisted Severus be the one to teach her Occlumency then they would have never been forced to learn to trust one another with their secrets as they had.
Severus fought the urge to sigh and surprised even himself by walking further into the room and settling himself into a chair at the kitchen table. He watched her for a moment wondering what was going through her mind and wondering what was going through his that he hadn’t left her there to go to bed himself.
“Can you listen and work, Potter?”
Rosalie turned to look across at him nodding in confusion.
“Then pay attention,” He told her, “It should come as no surprise that you have in fact already performed Legilimency on a number of occasions. They were crude and undeveloped attempts at best, however, knowing this may help you in the days to come.”
Rosalie frowned at him as he settled into lecture mode, “You’re teaching me Legilimency now?”
Severus arched and eyebrow at her, “Is that a problem?”
Rosalie stared at him for a beat, wondering what his game was. Finally she shook her head, “No.”
Severus stared at her a moment before nodding.
“The difference is those few short times you were able to gain access to my mind, a link had already been created between us; you simply followed it back into my mind. As rudimentary as that was, it is, however, essentially what I will be teaching you to do over the next several weeks,” Severus explained succinctly.
Slowly Rosalie returned to her cleaning, allowing herself to relax into the repetitive motion as Snape continued to talk. She was somewhat surprised to find herself falling into a rhythm with him as she worked; her guilt and anxiety falling into the background as she focused on the task before her and the smooth, rich cadence of Snape’s voice as he took to explaining the basics of Legilimency to her. It wasn’t long before she felt like she’d blinked and suddenly the kitchen was spotless and she was sitting across from Snape, a pot of tea between them as he talked.
She listened intently as he described the process, the need for tight personal control and the importance of direction. She needed to have focus before entering someone else’s mind, to have a goal, or else she’d find herself in a drift of memories and thoughts. She needed to know what it is she sought from them, at least until she could better understand the way the human mind worked. He explained that everyone, even Voldemort needed to have a point of focus before invoking the incantation or else the spell would be ineffectual, even if that focus was something as vague as the search for treachery in any of its many forms.
‘I’m going to suck worse at this than I did Occlumency,’ Rosalie thought absently as he described the intricacies of gaining access to someone’s mind.
“Legilimency requires far more subtlety than that of Occlumency. Any bumbling fool with an ounce of knowledge in the skill can blast their way into someone’s mind if they have the desire and knowledge to do so, you must learn to gain entry without making your presence known. A skilled Legilimens can enter your mind with nothing more than a glance.”
Rosalie shivered at the thought of all the times she’d been almost certain in class that Snape was reading her mind. He probably had been.
“Are you even listening, Potter?” He asked suddenly, his voice resigned, aware that she seemed to have drifted off into her own thoughts.
Rosalie nodded, “You were talking about finding the dormant aspect of the person’s consciousness, rather than the pool of ‘active thought’. Like entering a house through the back door while the owner was busy greeting someone out front, right?”
Snape sighed, “Essentially, yes, although I wouldn’t have put it in such terms.”
“It’s like what you taught me with Occlumency, the need for diversion? Only this time instead of creating the diversion, I’m making use of what is already naturally occurring.”
Snape nodded, and she knew from his lack of comment that he was pleased with her understanding thus far.
“Will you show me?”
Her Occlumency shields were already in place as she felt the gentle and familiar brush of Snape’s mind against her own. It was barely discernible, a whispered caress against the barrier of her mind as he entered and she doubted she would have felt it had his presence within her not been so wholly familiar after a more than a year of having him inside her head. It was second nature now for her to close her mind to him and she did so without thought.
“Do you feel me?” He asked.
Rosalie nodded, aware suddenly that he had meant for her to feel his entrance.
“Good, now follow the brush of my mind back, much like you have done by accident in the past only with less...force,” He coached.
Frowning Rosalie reached out with her mind and managing to embraced Snape’s presence with her own, coiling her consciousness around his to follow the presence back as it withdrew from her mind until she found herself engulfed in its essence.
Snape’s essence.
Being in Snape’s mind was nothing like what she’d experienced with him in the past. This time she wasn’t accidentally blasting her way into his private thoughts and memories only to be painfully and forcefully ejected again. Instead, he’d invited her in and although his mind was closed to her, she was surrounded by everything that was Snape and it was warm and inviting and personal.
It was overwhelming and for a moment she almost seemed to live and breathe everything that made the man who and what he was—they were connected in a basic and fundamental sense. She could feel the awareness of his body in the space around them as if it were her own. Each breath he took was one she took, as if they were one being. She could practically feel the rasp of material from his robes against his skin. She’d never felt so close to anyone in all her life and she doubted she ever would again without recreating the experience.
His dark eyes swum in her vision and with a jolt she remembered suddenly just whose mind and body she was sharing. She was wrapped up in everything that he was and with a startled gasp she broke the connection as her concentration shattered.
Snape was surveying her through inscrutable eyes, “Better than I had anticipated. It was an undisciplined attempt, but not without hope.”
Rosalie shook herself and nodded. She felt odd and shaky. That whole experience had been strangely and uncomfortably intimate. His consciousness had been familiar and easy in her own mind, but she’d been unprepared for the way it had wrapped around her, and accepted her back into its natural state. Would it be like that with everyone? Every time she entered someone’s mind? For those few moments she’d been surrounded by his presence, she’d felt like she’d truly known him—was a part of him—in a way she doubted anyone could truly fathom without having experienced it for themselves.
“Is it always so, um...overwhelming?” She asked uncomfortably, going with the least embarrassing word she could think of to describe what she had felt. Merlin, if Snape had experienced the same every time he’d been in her mind...he probably knew her inside out.
She fought the urge to blush at how intimately he likely knew her and how she thought. He’d stood witness to some of her most personal thoughts and memories over the last year—he no doubt knew more about what made her who she was then even her best friends. Yet it was because of this, at least in part, that she believed they’d finally come to respect one another—at least in her opinion.
“It can be. However, for the purpose of teaching you the art I accepted you into my mind and drew your presence in and you allowed your consciousness to submerge into mine,” He explained, “When you enter the mind of someone who is unaware, it is far less...malleable and you will be entering with a clear purpose in mind.”
Rosalie nodded, somewhat relieved as she glanced down at her tea. It had gone cold as some point during their lesson. Pushing herself up from the table she took the cup to the sink to rinse it out.
“It is late,” Snape abruptly, cutting their lesson short, “Go to bed. I will count myself lucky if you remember even half of what I have taught you tonight.”
Rosalie couldn’t bring herself to bristle at the blatant order. She was tired, and surprisingly, she felt like she might be able to sleep. Snape was gone from the table when she turned back to thank him and she took a moment to admire how silently he could move, before quickly restoring the kitchen to rights and taking herself off to bed.
- 2
- 3
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Gravity