The First Lesson

Phoenix Song, Chapter three : The First Lesson

DISCLAIMER : The characters and many of the situations described in this story are the property of the incomparable J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this story, which exists as a work of tribute.

I'd like to thank my betas: LAxo, for her convictions regarding split infinitives, and WriterMerrin, who has eyes like a hawk.

There it was again. Hermione Granger would recognise the sound of a softly turned page anywhere. Someone in the same room as her was reading and...that scratchy noise sounded just like a quill...taking notes, too. Not Ron, that's for sure. And certainly not Umbridge, either. Madam Pomfrey? Why would she be up in the middle of the night? Whoever it was, he or she sat close at hand. Hermione had opened her eyes and was aware of a soft, reddish glow coming from somewhere behind her. Lowering her eyelids in order to feign sleep, she rolled over, muttering as if she were dreaming and using the opportunity to glance around the Hospital Wing.

Professor Snape! There was no mistaking the distinctive silhouette seated only a few feet from her bed. A book was open in his lap, a quill poised in his hand. The point hovered over a half-finished annotation that he was writing directly into the margin of the page. At her movement he had frozen, and his dark eyes peered at her through the curtain of his hair.

Hermione held her breath. Being caught spying on Professor Snape was low on her list of priorities, even if he was sitting beside her bed at some ungodly hour of the morning. After what seemed like an interminably long time, Snape dropped his eyes back to his book. Hermione began to breath once more. Watching through her lowered lashes, she saw him finish writing the interrupted comment before placing the quill along the crease of the spine. Folding the book, he held it almost closed with one hand, his long forefinger inserted between the pages, marking his place. Only then did he acknowledge her presence.

"Miss Granger," he said calmly, nodding towards the bed.

Hermione caught her breath involuntarily. "P-professor," she stuttered. He knew all along, she thought, a little resentfully. He didn't seem like he was about to hex her or take off house points, however, and that had to count for something. Indeed, with Harry absent and Ron fast asleep if close at hand, this might well provide her only opportunity for civil conversation: an opportunity she intended to seize.

Before she spoke, she levered herself up onto one elbow. "Professor," she began, "I want to thank you for your actions last Friday. You saved my life..."

"Enough." His free hand was upraised to cut her off. "You have no need to thank me: I was merely doing my job."

"Not merely," she insisted. "Madam Pomfrey told me of the risks you took. If that horrible curse had erupted while you were in my memories, we both could have died..."

"I said, enough." His tone brooked no argument and Hermione fell silent, though not without a small huff of annoyance. His next comment, however, rendered her momentarily speechless with surprise. "Unless you are capable of talking about a more interesting topic, I shall leave."

Was he really inviting her to talk with him? The tone of his voice had a cruel edge to it but the words he spoke were almost friendly. "P-professor?" she stuttered again.

In response he sneered slightly and stared disdainfully down his nose. "Surely you of all people, Miss Granger, can think of a question?"

Provoked by his customary rudeness, Hermione blurted out the question hovering closest to the tip of her tongue.

"Why are you here, anyway?"

"Even Madam Pomfrey deserves an occasional night of uninterrupted sleep." Snape sounded bored.

His oddly tender exchange with Madam Pomfrey from the day of her accident popped into Hermione's mind, prompting a tart reply: "I guess you don't consider her wicked, then." Oops, she thought. Rather than snapping at her, however, Snape smirked.

"Hmm," he stroked the forefinger of his free hand along his upper lip, "of all my colleagues, I certainly wouldn't number Poppy Pomfrey among the wicked . . . Bellatrix Lestrange, however . . ." He let the sentence tail off.

A small, extraordinarily shocked gurgle of laughter escaped Hermione's lips. This is surreal. Surreptitiously she pinched the skin on the inside of her left arm, hard. It hurt. Not a dream then. Though her mind was reeling at the situation in which she found herself, Hermione Granger wasn't about to let such an opportunity slip by. "Actually, Professor, I do have a question," she ventured.

"Miss Granger, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you do not have a question to ask, please inform me."

"Does that mean you'll answer me?"

"That, Miss Granger, depends on the question."

Fair enough. Hermione took a deep breath. "How come, at the Ministry, the Death Eaters didn't just kill us all?"

"That is a good question, to which there are several likely answers." Snape rested the spine of the book he was holding briefly against his lower lip. "Firstly, the Killing Curse, like all the Unforgivables, expends a great deal of magical energy. The process becomes easier with practice; however, in a combat situation, it can leave the caster at a disadvantage: the energy drain slows the reflexes and the strength of subsequent curses. Secondly, the Death Eaters are accustomed to playing with their food." Snape's mouth twisted with distaste. "They were facing six underage opponents, mere teenagers. Almost certainly they felt themselves adequate to the situation without having to use such powerful magic. Thirdly, the Dark Lord...as you may, or may not, have noticed...has a rather unhealthy obsession with Harry Potter. It leads to the occasional lapse of logic. He is intent on the boy's death, but determined to do the deed himself. To do otherwise would be nothing less than an admission of his own fallibility. Were one of the Death Eaters to kill Potter, even by accident, it would guarantee their own death. As a consequence, his presence gave you all some measure of protection; only when there was no chance of hitting Potter by accident were you at risk of the Adava Kedavra."

"So," Hermione's voice was barely a whisper, "when I was under the table, when Harry saved me," she couldn't bring herself to say the name of the curse, "that was because the Death Eater had a clear shot and knew he wouldn't hit Harry?"

"Precisely."

Hermione swallowed heavily. The horror of her brush with death washed over her, leaving an oddly metallic taste in her mouth. A sense of relief was followed by cowardliness, and then, as Sirius and Cedric came to mind, by guilt.

"You said," she began, her throat dry. "You said that you would tell me exactly how stupid we were. I guess now is a good opportunity."

"It seems to me that in your current mood you could perform that task for yourself quite adequately."

True. For a long couple of minutes, silence stretched between them. Hermione contemplated the edge of the sheet, distractedly pleating it into folds with the fingers of her right hand. In retrospect, the visit to the Ministry had been a tactical disaster from start to finish.

Finally, she spoke. "I wish we'd had more than one meeting of the Duelling Club."

In response, Snape made a barely disguised noise of disgust. "Do you think that a few more lessons would have tipped the scales?"

"It might have helped me." Hermione had flinched at the scorn in his voice. Her answer was more despairing than defiant.

"Six students, all underage, each of whom has suffered under an incompetent string of Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers. The Death Eaters would have been more than a match for the lot of you no matter how many duelling classes you'd attended! Didn't Black's death teach you that much?"

Hermione pressed herself a little further back into her pillows. Snape's anger was palpable. Still, she muttered again, this time more to herself than her professor, "It might have helped me."

He looked at her then, his eyes narrowed appraisingly. "That it might have. Your reflexes are poor, and your defensive spells lack force."

Hermione knew that the critique was deserved, but his words hurt nonetheless. The back of her eyes prickled with tears, and she blinked rapidly, determined not to let Snape see.

"If you hope to match Potter's Defence Against the Dark Arts marks," he continued, "I suggest you work on your technique over the summer holidays."

"I would, if I knew how." Hermione cursed herself for sounding petulant, although at least she wasn't crying.

"Think, Miss Granger." Snape had adopted his most sarcastic tone. "Apart from Defence exams, what does Potter do better than you do?"

"Nothing!" Definitely petulant. If not downright sulky. "Nothing except Quidditch, that is."

"Exactly."

"You can't be serious?" Surprise forced out self-pity in an instant. "Harry's good at DADA because he's good at Quidditch? No, that can't be true...or Ron would be better than me, too!"

"It's not quite that simple, Miss Granger. Mentally, you are quite capable, but your physical fitness is below average. It is a combination of mental and physical strength that allows each spell to be cast with precision and force. Potter is physically stronger than you, as, admittedly, is Ronald Weasley. Yet, while Potter seems...to all intents and purposes...as intellectually deficient as Mr. Weasley, he has a remarkably pig-headed tenacity in regards to the practice of defensive and offensive spellwork."

Hermione was so astounded that the insults to her best friends barely registered. Her brain churned with new information. She pulled herself up into a seated position against the head of the bed. "So," she theorised, "in that case, I'll never be Harry's equal in DADA...he's taller than I am, and much stronger. In fact, I'll never match any of the boys."

"Nonsense." Snape sniffed derisively. "Have you lost all ability to reason logically? Just a few moments ago you claimed to be better than Ronald Weasley."

"Oh. Then . . ." Hermione tailed off. What, then?

"Ginevra Weasely is probably a better example with which to compare yourself."

"Of course! She plays Quidditch, she's incredibly fit and her hexes are remarkably strong!" The excitement of realisation bubbled through Hermione's body, and she wrapped her arms tightly round her knees in an attempt to control the urge to jump around in delight.

"Cause and effect," remarked Snape. "Comparative strength is less important than relative strength. It is enough to be in peak physical shape."

"But, why has no-one ever told me this before?"

A grimace passed quickly across Snape's face. "It is information that most people take for granted."

Hermione stilled, her excitement dissipated entirely. "You mean that it is information that most purebloods take for granted," she stated, her tone expressionless.

"Yes."

Hermione took a deep breath and let it out slowly through her nose. "Well, I know now, I guess. And you think I should learn to play Quidditch over the holidays?"

Snape raised one eyebrow. "Not Quidditch necessarily. You would be hard pressed to learn to fly well at your parents' house without breaking both the Reasonable Restriction on Underage Magic and the International Statute of Secrecy. Furthermore Quidditch is impossible to learn by oneself. I suggest running, perhaps supplemented with yoga. In your case, running has the distinct advantage in that it, unlike other sports, can be learnt perfectly adequately from a book."

Ouch. Cruel, but accurate. Why pretend that she would learn physical fitness any differently from the way she learned everything else: from a book? At least Dad'll be pleased. Her father was always trying to convince her to go running; at one point he'd even run a few half-marathons. Ha. So maybe she wouldn't learn everything from a book after all, but that was information Snape didn't need to know. Professor Snape. Hermione glanced at him from under her eyelashes and reviewed the strange...and curiously useful...conversation they'd had. He hadn't exactly been nice, but neither had he behaved in his usual fashion. He didn't normally answer her questions. Weird. She wondered whether she dared ask one more.

"Professor?"

Snape looked up, his dark hair sliding across one cheek to reveal his eyes, and cocked an interrogative eyebrow.

"Sir, why are you telling me these things?"

Snape sighed softly through his nose. He folded shut the book that he had returned to reading, placing it on the small table beside her bed. Rising to his feet, he came and stood as close to the bed as he could without touching it and folded his arms firmly.

"Miss Granger, the information I am about to reveal must go no further." He glared at her down his long nose. "There included the two imbeciles you call friends."

"Harry and Ron are not imbeciles!"

"I beg your pardon?" Snape leaned forward slightly, looming across the bed. The charmed light by which he had been reading was behind him, and he cast an ominous shadow across the bed.

"Err . . . I beg your pardon, sir." Oops. And he was just about to tell me something important, too.

Snape straightened and raised one eyebrow. "Better," he conceded.

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she hadn't blown it, after all.

"I want your word, Miss Granger, that you will not reveal the contents of our conversation to anyone."

Ah. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. All through her third year she'd kept the Time-Turner hidden from everyone, Harry and Ron included.

"You have it, sir."

"Very well." Snape turned away and paced several feet from the bed before spinning suddenly back towards her, his robes swirling around his thin frame. He stayed there, his arms tightly crossed over his chest. "The headmaster has decided that during the next year, you will take private lessons with me."

"Occlumency?" The question left her lips before Hermione was conscious that she meant to speak, and she bit her lip, horrified to have interrupted.

Snape shrugged dismissively. "Among other things."

She knew that he was watching her closely, knew he was sneering at her, yet she couldn't suppress a little shudder of joy, nor a barely voiced exclamation of anticipation: "Wow!"

"To begin with, I have several books for you to read over the holidays. I will leave them on your bedside table sometime during the next few days. Do not show them to anyone. They contain mental exercises as well as theories and practical applications of Occlumency. I want you to practice the relaxation and mind-clearing techniques every day. I will know if you have not. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Once you have your sixth-year schedule of classes, we will need to find a time during which your absence will not be noticed."

Hermione was already well aware of the times during term at which she could guarantee her solitude. "Sir, assuming that Umbridge's life-time Quidditch ban is lifted, we could meet during the Gryffindor training times. Harry and Ron will both be occupied."

"Indeed, that does seems likely." Snape stepped towards the bed and picked up his book from the table. He looked down at her. "Lie down," he ordered. Feeling somewhat like an obedient dog, Hermione shuffled back down under the covers. "For now, you need to rest."

Snape settled back into his chair, the conversation clearly over. Hermione closed her eyes tightly, yet strained her ears for the sounds of his turning pages. Though convinced that her whirling thoughts would keep her awake, she was very quickly deeply asleep.