Eight: Will and Won't

Winter/Spring 1996

So commenced the Christmas holidays. After the trying first days, I firmly resolved to have the benefit of the usual quiet stay at Hogwarts, my annual reprieve from the trials of term: the sniffs of disdain in the staff room; the sniggering whispers of students; the pervasive Gryffindor glorification; the compulsory Great Hall dining and the ritualised, purposeless greetings therein; the requisite well-mannered platitudes designed to keep empty affairs in working order; the streams of bland social intercourse from the mouths of students and teachers alike.

I received no reply from Miss Granger and so I believed her properly humbled. Some days later, this misconception was remedied in a most unfortunate manner upon my receipt of a summons to Albus's office.

I made my way to the seventh floor, where I grumbled the current password – "Ignotus" – to the gargoyle sentry, then ascended the smooth circle steps to the Headmaster's tower, prepared my face with impassive expression, and entered. Fawkes the phoenix squawked irritably at me¹.

I seated myself across the desk from Albus in a very uncomfortable straight-backed wooden chair and moved out of the way of my feet a magical weathervane (set to London; raining there, not that one needed a weathervane to tell that). The day's Daily Prophet, proud promulgator of puerile slop, lay upon the desktop; plastered across the front page were the words:

"QUIGLEY IS GAY!

Future of Ballycastle Bats at stake?"

Beside it lay a pile of old blunted quills; a bunch of knotty skeins of string in various states of unraveling; his bezel-rimmed old pocket-watch, numbered by planets; and a half-created crossword puzzle.

He greeted me above the baritone din of his menagerie of magical devices, the 'whizzing gizmos', as he often referred to them: the dissonant ticks of a pendulum, the low hum of a miniature pulsar, the whir of a continual motion merry-go-round, the vibration from a pile of glowing Remembralls. Behind him, a pile of Galleons had been thrown carelessly onto a shelf, soon to be lost under a stack of books and a sand hourglass, a time-turner, a hollow goat horn, and an assortment of other 'oddments' that I knew to be trinkets and keepsakes from memorable students. The Sorting Hat, reeking as always of Gryffindor bias, perched smugly atop this assemblage. His Pensieve was removed from its usual place; it now sat next to a kettle on the floor aside the desk.

I had assumed the meeting's subject to be the Dark Lord's potential motives for an attack on the Ministry and the use of Nagini as a weapon. But as Albus began to speak, I soon found the situation much worse than I had suspected. The gist was this: On the night of the attack on Arthur Weasley at the Ministry, Mr. Potter, still at Hogwarts, had experienced some sort of simultaneous dream of the event and had awoken and run straight to warn Dumbledore, whereupon the Order was alerted and Arthur's life saved in the nick of time.

My first reaction to this incredible tale was anger: "Why did you not tell me of this sooner? You have been avoiding me."

"You would have known immediately if you did not insist on shunning Grimmauld Place," said Dumbledore. "There is quite the Christmas celebration going on there now."

"Sod Christmas." I glared balefully, as would any underpaid, unappreciated employee.

"I'm sure there are several who would be quite pleased to see you there, including Arthur himself. After all, the antidote saved his life."

"You seem to think Potter saved his life," I said, mentally discarding his suggestion.

"Yes, that too."

"You say the boy saw the attack in a dream?" I said incredulously, able to make neither head nor tail of this turn of events. I recalled something of the strange dream I had of a snake, which I have previously described; but due to its irrelevance and the disquieting nature of Granger's involvement in it, I elected to remain silent on that subject. I kept it well-Occluded, far beneath many protective layers of memory, bundled it tightly in some long-buried Lily-dream (a thoroughly chaste one, of course; that was the safest location), and guarded my eyes from his steel-pointed gaze.

A chime tinkled behind him. "Not exactly," he said, inclining his head, shifting his wand from one steady but varicosed hand to the other. "And you ought not to be so quick to judge dreams so harshly. They may serve a purpose. For instance, they may goad us to act. Or to reconsider . . ."

I looked up, too sharply. Had he glimpsed something of my untoward subconscious? No, it was merely his usual sermonising; he continued on about Potter, not even looking at me, but contemplating his wand, which he idly tapped against the desk, directing its point away from my person as was proper etiquette. No, it was not exactly a dream, he continued, but a heightened, altered state that arose when Potter was in a vulnerable state such as sleep, in which could surface a strange sort of mental connection between Lord V... and Potter, one that transcended space and time, a mysterious bond he had long suspected and now considered all but certain.

Much unsettled, I said, "Headmaster . . . you are certainly much more experienced than I in the ways of magic. But – I have never heard of such a – connection as you describe. With all due respect – it seems quite impossible. You are suggesting a manner of magic that violates the most fundamental restrictions of theory. I – there must be a more reasonable explanation. Perhaps Potter is lying . . . ."

At this, the Headmaster stood and paced to the window, pausing between a lunascope and a double-faced turn-of-the-century clock. Facing away from me, he said, "Harry is not lying. I am quite certain that Harry has been sharing Tom Riddle's thoughts and emotions at times. I know, on the face of it, it seems highly unusual. But as you already know, neither of them are usual wizards."

Potter, not a usual wizard! I muttered, "As you already know, I believe Potter is as abysmally average as wizards go."

He ignored me: "I believe the connection is becoming stronger and more dangerous."

"But – have you any theory as to its nature? How could this have come about?"

"I have several hypotheses. It may have resulted from the extraordinary rebounding of the killing curse so many years ago. But as to the details – well, I've some speculations, but they are not yet ready to be tested or shared with even my most trusted advisor." He looked at me meaningfully, as if I were to believe myself that man (and I almost believed – how stupid I was!). "That is why you will have to trust me to proceed in the best way possible," he said.

". . . I do," I said, bitter because it was true. For all that I loathed being kept in the dark, I knew that without Albus's far-seeing direction, all would be lost. After all, he was the greatest wizard of his age, the only wizard (save the Dark Lord himself) powerful and willful enough to openly defy the Ministry and even the Wizengamot. He alone among men seemed able to wield his authority with restraint and finesse; one had only to note his noble declining of the position of Minister for Magic, instead choosing to preside over Hogwarts. Over the years, he had kept the school oriented to the Founders' traditions and prevented its degeneration into a factory for Ministry apologists, had kept their political fingers out of the curriculum and out of the teachers' affairs. It was not a perfect institution, not perfectly insulated from the corruptions of the greater society, but it was the closest thing we had in wizarding Britain. Only here could the poorest of magical children find refuge and rise through its ranks based on merit²; only at Hogwarts was learnedness sought, at least in theory. Albus's foresight in preserving the academy's independence now allowed him the autonomy to coordinate from the Headmaster's tower the movement of each Order cell and operation without the Ministry's meddling. He would collate the data each member collected, arrange all the players; with his supervision events would play themselves out to their logical conclusion. He would do what no lesser wizard could, navigate the course of the war and guide Hogwarts to safe harbour, the Order to victory and the Dark Lord to death.

He turned around, and he seemed tired and worn. Blue wrinkled bags hung under his eyes; his creases had worried and deepened to fissures. I suddenly realised that he was aging a great deal. Certainly he was no less powerful than ever, and of course he had always been old to my eyes – twenty years' passage was nothing to him – but some barely perceptible change had come over him, a weariness that belonged to an old man, not an ancient wizard.

"That is good to know," he said benignly, "because we will need to do some investigations into this matter. And as you are aware, the most robust experiments employ a double-blind method: that is, in which both experimenter and subject remain unaware of the true nature of the experiment. Of course, this arrangement is especially crucial in your position, to protect both you and the Order from Tom's finding out."

"What sort of investigations?" I had the presentiment of a trap.

He hesitated. "I would like you to conduct private lessons with Harry in Occlumency this coming term."

My anger returned in a flash. Occlumency! This could be no coincidence, after Granger's bold proposition – and unusual post-refusal silence – of the previous week.

"Did Miss Granger supply this notion to you, by chance?" I spat.

Hiding behind the fierce glitter of his half-moon spectacles, he pled innocence: "The circumstances themselves suggest that training Harry in Occlumency would be a very wise course of action."

"He is underage. Are you not concerned for his tender mind?"

"We haven't got much of a choice, I'm afraid. We must discover more about the nature of this mental connection. And he must, for his own safety and that of all Order members, shut down any opening the Dark Lord might have into his memories or feelings. It is for this reason that I am counting on your expertise to help Harry master the necessary techniques."

I sat in bitter, dubious silence until he added, "I suppose I did mention Occlumency to Miss Granger in passing the other day – I believe she approves of the idea –"

"Merlin's bloody balls, what has Granger's approval got to do with anything?" I had let out the words before I could control myself.

Albus gave me a stern look, and I suddenly wondered if the shame creeping over me was how the girl felt at my own dark glowers after one of her combative outbursts. But that was different; she was a child and I her professor, whereas Albus was being completely opaque and unreasonable.

He said, "I confess I am hoping she will convince Harry to apply himself to his Occlumency studies with you. He may need the prodding. In fact, it might be useful to have her attend your lessons as well. I'm sure she would be delighted to learn, and she is well-grounded and close enough to the age of consent that I have no concerns. It would certainly help Harry to have her there. She could well be the perfect messenger between you and Harry."

"Why don't I give the whole school private lessons? I haven't nearly enough tasks; of course I wish nothing more than to fill my evenings tutoring students in arcane subjects."

"Oh, Severus. Yes, you may certainly teach them both." He clucked approvingly. "And by the way, happy birthday – it is approaching, correct? I shall insist that you come up for a whisky and a birthday sing-along with the old masters." ³

Several of the portraits chuckled and broke into song.

There was nothing happy about my birth, and he knew it. And he knew, as he so casually dismissed me, that I sat seething under my skin, yet he twinkled and nodded and hummed a little tune under his breath. Why must I, and not Albus himself, suffer these lessons with Potter? Had not the boy and his ilk caused me enough pains already? Was Potter not his favourite, his all-important acolyte? Granger's surveillance of my office was evidently insufficient; was Potter also to infiltrate the Slytherin lair, to determine my true loyalties for the untrusting master? Why, why? Always instructions with no explanation, as he sought my submission to more and more onerous tasks!

Golden boy Potter and his prophecy! The once and future Saviour of the wizarding world, the boy who had lived (and if only he had not! Had he only been struck first, perhaps then she might still be alive), the idol the populace needed: rich, upper-caste, privileged, practically pure-blood (and so easy it had been to forget that Lily was Muggle-born), foolhardy (a trait seen as bravery by his quivering brethren), mediocre at everything save Quidditch – thus thoroughly and safely the paragon of British wizardry. So safe that his bleating herd of devotees (you, hypocrite Reader!) need never question or doubt who serves Good and who Evil. You joyfully march as the rank and file; taking refuge in numbers and noise, bearing your Potter-standard and slavish morality, you wait to be saved by your hero or your god. You refined monsters cling to your substanceless slogans – Honour! Courage! Hope! – and your faith in your sameness, in the Otherness of the enemy.

Potter! It is fools like him that have kept our society stagnating within the ancien régime and its medieval mindset for a thousand years, kept the good fat-fed citizens immersed in intellectual turpitude, any semblance of intelligent debate gagged in favour of soothsaying. How fondly you submit to deception! No, Azkaban has never held a political prisoner; centaurs and giants belong on reserves for their very own good; the Ministry's noble ends surely justify soul-hungry Dementors, casual Obliviation of curious Muggles and critical dissidents alike, bribes and boot-licking; and of course the Dark Lord could not possibly have returned.

But as Albus commanded, I knew my place; I was to obey. This was simply the next heavy step of my unending restitution, the punishment for my failure to be the man he thought I should be. I could never forget that I too had been a self-blinkered follower of lies; for had I not once sought honour and favour with my master by blindly bringing to him the prophecy, sealing my own fate in the process? And so at last I bowed my pitiful head.

"But no other students," I said tightly, as the old knot of shame turned in my gut. It was demeaning enough to instruct Potter without an audience too.

"That is your choice, Severus," he said solemnly.

* * *

My normally ill-humoured mood turned even blacker that winter. The Dark Lord never uttered a word about the Ministry attack or on Potter's potential involvement, but several supposedly offhanded questions he put to me on the possibilities of cross-distance mind control suggested several ominous circumstances: one, that a thought-link between him and Potter did exist, and he had learnt of it and was beginning to explore how he might exploit its properties; and two, that one could never presume the Dark Lord to impart any insight or plan of his. He remained as distrustful as ever.

Meanwhile, his ranks swelled with escaped Azkaban prisoners and Dementors, thus aggravating the risky exercise of my own occupation and commencing the systematic re-instilment of fear into the wizarding populace, most of whom had never even learnt how to produce a proper Patronus or hadn't practiced for decades. In response, the impotent Ministry, though helpless to halt this advance, wrapped its censorial tendrils ever tighter round Hogwarts and the press in a desperate attempt to convince the public otherwise. The likes of Fudge and Umbridge simply could not bear the idea of relinquishing power or even the illusion thereof. But the Dark was fast rising; it was only a matter of time before the Ministry's loosening clamp on the truth came undone.

Granger's assistantship continued in the manner I have previously described. As punishment for inflicting the torture of Occlumency lessons with Potter upon me, she scrubbed cauldrons until her dainty fingers bled ("Completely unfair," she howled, but submitted) and until she ceased her shrill denials of culpability. After that, she did not mention Potter again for a time, though she continued to needle me about mental magic. Yes, the germ of an idea had been planted into her mind, and once it had rooted she would not let it go. I did my best to ignore her.

My spirits were not lifted in the least by the invidious labour of instructing Gryffindor's own witless wonderboy. Though I do not wish to belabour Potter's story any more than absolutely necessary – if I could, I would leave him out entirely – I must at least make mention of the lessons for their tangential relation to my tale. Those sickening forays into Potter's hovel of a mind yielded few pleasures and much pain, for though I assiduously avoided even a glance at that scar or those eyes, there were some facts I could not escape. I saw that he did indeed harbour a mysterious – and deeply frightening – awareness at times of the Dark Lord's thoughts and memories, though I was unable to determine if the phenomenon worked both ways. I saw Weasley's blood pooled on the floor, saw the deep, dark interior of the Ministry, the unseen prophecy hidden in its bowels. And I saw Lily – standing, incorporeal, beside the lifeless body of Cedric Diggory and the reborn Dark Lord; waving through the Mirror of Erised (oh, the pain and disgust at this all-too-familiar memory warped by Potter's wretched mind to contain him and his father); and in the primeval haze of an infant's impressions, her fragile, girlish form, crumpled and still, at the foot of a crib.

It was too much. In an effort to deflect the impact of these memories upon me, I distracted myself by idly chasing his memories of Miss Granger. I hoped I might find something to hold over her head or at least gain a bit of bargaining power, but at first I could barely locate anything pertinent to her at all, as I kept getting waylaid by Potter's disordered emotions, which flailed about his thick cranium like a rogue Firebolt. The boy had not a modicum of self-control. He blundered through life by blind feeling about, vague intuition, animal instinct, and reliance on Granger's feats of higher knowledge. He kept bringing me back to such juvenile obsessions as kissing Miss Chang in the Room of Requirement, winning against Slytherin at Quidditch (by cheating, I might add), and adoration of various inadequate father figures. His memories of Granger seemed to consist chiefly of her doing his homework and their past misadventures. I saw her child-self lying in the hospital wing, covered in thick black cat hair, the result of a botched Polyjuice experiment (the little thief!); saw a certain incident, of which I had been previously unaware, several years back involving the mangy Sirius Black and a time-turner, impressively and completely illegally orchestrated by the girl (so that was how those wretched, wrongdoing children had freed him!); saw her bound and tied underwater, trapped beneath the Great Lake, in the second task of the Triwizard Tournament. I saw nothing in the nature of fancy for the girl on his part; instead he seemed completely baffled by her, disdained her books and her lack of Quidditch fanaticism. I gathered that instead she must fancy him, taken in by his puffed, reckless charges, the mark of the 'Hero' on his bony forehead, and his status; a hero-worship sort of infatuation would certainly explain why they spent so much time together.

What irony that the boy allegedly so much like Lily bore such little resemblance to her, less even than did Granger! Potter's egregious conduct made Granger seem positively angelic. As a small consolation, I at least confirmed that the boy's vitriol toward me was nearly as great as mine for him, and to my slight gratification, it was couched in a hefty dose of fear. But his cowardice did not translate to obedience, and I lost my final shred of patience just before the Easter holidays, when Potter violated both school rules and wizarding law by stealing into my Pensieve and viewing several of my most intimate memories. Any other student would have been expelled for such indecent, illegal behaviour; but no, never Potter, who possessed a law unto himself and could do no wrong, though he lacked even the most basic respect for inviolably private possessions like memories. I should have hexed the little shit straight to St. Mungo's, given him the thrashing he deserved, and I would have had it not been for the better side of his parentage. I ought to have more properly punished Granger as well for her many misdeeds. Because of her, my most private memories were no doubt being passed all over Hogwarts; perhaps she was laughing the loudest. Damn them both! I was a weak enough man without my students knowing it too.

To make matters worse, the cauldron-scrubbing exercise had apparently not been as successful as I had hoped, for she came to confront me about the matter just as the Easter holidays were starting. I predicted the nature of her visit and only reluctantly admitted her into my office, dimming the light to unnerve her.

"Erm, Professor, I need to talk to you. May I ask you a question?"

The little candle-flame on my desk wrenched and twisted in time to her words.

"You may not." But I hesitated then, and she took her opening.

"You're not meeting with Harry anymore, are you?"

"Mr. Potter refuses to learn."

"What if we both took it? Me and Harry both? Maybe that would help; I could help him –"

"You're jealous of your boyfriend's special treatment, are you?"

She spluttered a denial.

"I spend more than enough time babysitting you children already."

"I'm not –"

"You assume I would willingly spend more hours with you than those absolutely required?"

She protested hotly that she was not interested in spending time with me either; she was merely trying to do her part for the war effort and for Harry and Dumbledore, unlike some people she knew who were letting their personal feelings get in the way and acting decidedly childish about the whole matter – at which point in her tirade, I promptly cut her off, threw her out of my office, and told her not to return.

* * *

Albus (who was taking a temporary 'respite', as he said, from Headmastership) made little comment on the heap of tripe I had gleaned from Potter's mind. Oddly, neither did he protest my flat refusal to further entertain either Potter or Granger. He merely gave a pointed look and a guilt-inducing sigh: "Well, if you are certain you have tried to the best of your abilities, we shall just have to see if it is enough . . . Harry will just have to learn by some other means."

"He is lamentably incapable of shutting his mind. He'll never learn anything on his own."

"Well, no one really learns anything on his own, you know. And both of you must learn to collaborate. That is why I had hoped your feelings might change."

"They have not."

". . . Then perhaps I have made a mistake. I thought it had been long enough now . . . but I suppose some wounds may run too deep for healing," he said, and he was right.

So I smugly returned to my solitary existence. The Monday of Easter holiday was blessedly quiet; I was able to work with no interruptions or whiny requests, and I was quite sure I never wanted to see another student again, especially Gryffindors. Tuesday was dull. By the arrival of Thursday, our other appointed meeting day, the silence was becoming unbearable. The office seemed strange and unnatural. Each time I glanced at the clock, the hour moved yet more slowly. My mind wandered dreadfully. I imagined Granger slouched in the old Grimmauld library, thumbing through dust-covered, outdated texts and feeling unsatisfied, returning to Hogwarts, carefully etching guilty perfection into the essay on Daffy's elixir I had assigned over break, finally flinging open the door to my office (this, physically impossible as it was heavily warded) and apologising in a state of abject contrition. Then I remembered Potter, with whom she had no doubt commiserated about how horrid I was, and now I imagined the two of them enjoying their private moments at Grimmauld Place, plotting and snogging, sniggering at old Snivelly's memories and scheming for more entertainment at his expense. Any penitence of hers would be a ploy to guilt me into folding, and once I fell into her hands, what other tricks might she have up her sleeve?

But her creeping influence and my weakness prevailed. And so, after a week of pacing about, accomplishing nothing, and stewing over Miss Granger's aspersions upon my person, I found myself back at the head of my classroom watching her as she fidgeted between Potter and Weasley, refusing to meet my eye and looking pouty, and I was forced to inwardly admit, with no small amount of self-disgust, that my choler was in part due to her absence, and that if it continued, I might rather miss her company (if not her sleights to my character). How disgraceful was I to have allowed myself to grow dependent on another's presence – and that of a student, a child! How quickly had I turned to a Severus domesticus! I considered the unexpected conundrum before me: How was I going to induce her to return to the dungeon without having to make an apology myself (which would hardly be appropriate since, you must admit, her conduct was completely out of line)? I must instead invent some sort of didactic pretext to lure her back. I finally decided to disregard my misgivings and simply offer her what she had asked for.

The fifth-year Potions class was packing up as I cleared my throat and began. "Granger, I'd like a word with you," I said blandly. A general chorus of "oooh" arose from the students, like a baying pack of hounds. (And she had the gall to call me immature!) I waited until well after the last stragglers had left us alone, until I had quelled a slight trace of self-consciousness from my mind and until she began to squirm uneasily.

"I believe you owe me something," I said finally.

" . . . I do?" she said uncertainly.

"Yes . . ." She waited. "An apology," I said pointedly.

She coloured. "Oh."

I snapped, "You know, I ought to assign you detention for the rest of the year for that remark of yours the other day. I could have had Potter expelled, but I didn't. I suggest you take that into consideration before you insult your professors again."

"Why, what did Harry do?" she said and frowned, and I realised at once that I had misspoke, that she didn't know. Potter hadn't told her. Interesting.

"Mr. Potter –" (How to put this?) "– began to rifle through my personal possessions when I had to step out to address an emergency. I caught him just before he had done himself real harm." (Perfectly true, in a way.)

"Really? Oh, Harry . . . I – I didn't know, and – well, maybe I spoke out of turn . . . ."

It was not quite the groveling I was hoping for, but I supposed I could accept it. I affected a well-honed pedagogical air, aimed at a distant point on the ceiling: "Despite your abominable behaviour of last week, I have reconsidered your request for Occlumency lessons. Not Potter. Only for yourself.

"I have done this for two reasons: One, if you manage to learn anything, you may be able to advise Potter on his 'dreams'. I have got nowhere with him. But Professor Dumbledore believes you might be of help to him. Perhaps you can teach him some study habits.

"And two: As Potter's close – confidante – you are potentially at risk yourself of Legilimentic attack, thus putting the Order at risk. A trained Dark Legilimens – and there are several – could easily decide to employ this strategy at some point. I suggest Occlumency lessons in place of your Potions meetings, twice weekly, until your O.W.L.s. That will give you about a month, enough for the basics if you apply yourself properly."

She appeared to be carefully weighing the proposal.

"With you?" she said.

"Yes," I hissed and fussed with my quill.

Presently her brow furrowed; she burst out shrilly, "But the O.W.L.s –"

I had anticipated this objection, of course, and said, "It would not be an extra time commitment than that which you have already given, and laborious homework is not required. It is anyhow not a subject that can be learnt through books. I will assign you some mental exercises to prepare for our sessions – some you have already run across in your readings on mental magic – but these can be undertaken in conjunction with your daily routine, and besides ought to help you prepare for your O.W.L.s. I'm sure you are overly prepared anyway." She still looked uncertain. "This training is of far greater importance. For the Order." I added, "Or is it that you feel yourself too mature for lessons with me?"

She coloured slightly and said, "Okay, I'd like to."

"Very well. I shall expect you tomorrow evening at your usual time. And if you would – please be discreet about the nature of our lessons – especially from certain 'pink' people that might be nosing about."

She grinned conspiratorially and affirmed her collusion; then she hung about, doubtless hoping for some other concession. "That will be all, Miss Granger," I said sternly, and she left in a hurry.

¹ Animals and I generally do not get on very well. That is why I now to leave their affairs to Hagrid, who, not coincidentally, is not so fond of me either.

² At least until one graduated.

³ I was in fact subjected to this.

Author's Notes:

* Tremendous thanks to Countrymouse and Hollimel for their insights and fact-checking.

* A special thank you to Charles Baudelaire for his 'hypocrite readers' and 'refined monsters' (translated from the French by various learned people, not me).

* Professor Dumbledore of course repeated his view that "some wounds run too deep for healing" to Mr. Potter later in the year. It is a direct quote from OOTP.

* I wish to acknowledge Lariope's fic Second Life for the use of the metaphor of double-blind experiments. It fits the situation too well for me to resist using it here, but she (and others, I'm sure) thought of it long before I did.