10. Overflown

A/N. Again, thank you for reading and reviewing this. I'm lagging behind on personal responses, but I will answer to each one of you. Some of them made me so happy I grinned like an idiot at my computer screen. My husband even thought I had got myself involved in an affair and had just received an e-mail from my supposed lover. Haha :) This summer has not been the best for me so far, with all the heat, forest fires so close to home, and real life dramas, so your response cheers me up a lot. Thank you, my readers!

And a special, chocolate-covered thank you goes to potionsmistress23.

"Professor," Hermione called out hesitantly after five minutes of standing still in the middle of the Forbidden Forest at night.

Silence. Drooping silence everywhere around, interrupted only by occasional cries of nocturnal creatures.

At least ten minutes must have passed, and she called out again, with more urgency this time. "Professor, if you could tell me what I'm supposed to be anticipating..."

Her little speech was cut off by a loud screech nearby. The sound was so mindlessly horrible, the young witch was sure it could only be produced by a mating pterodactyl or something equally hideous.

The forest seemed to be crawling with hidden, not particularly friendly life. Continuing with that particular train of thought seemed precarious enough for her to try and concentrate on something else. Except, there wasn't much of anything else on which to concentrate.

Okay, relax, think, focus, Hermione told herself and took several deep breaths. Where was her mentor?

Another fifteen minutes or so later, Hermione thought she could differentiate much better between the various squeals, whistles, cackles, shuffles, and twitters which constituted the cacophony of the night around her. She also noticed that her sense of smell was becoming more acute. She could pick up the intoxicating aroma of the blooming, giant night violets, endemics to the Forbidden Forest few knew about because of their seeming uselessness. Putrid stink of rotting leftovers of some predator's dinner was carried over when the wind whiffed from her left. A hint of stone bramble juice. Wait. It was too late in the year for fresh stone bramble. But she knew it for a fact, from a few agitated conversations over lunch, that the fifth-years were making a Talkeasy Tea, stone bramble juice being its base. A-ha, got you. She indulged in a victorious smile.

"You know, you're obviously standing in a leeward side, because I can smell you," she stated, shifting her weight to one foot. Her hands found their regular place at her hips, in a stance she used when she was about to give Ron and Harry a piece of her mind.

"So you can. And it took you a good half an hour to make sure I didn't leave you here to become the harpy hatchling's meatball toy," a voice right behind her rolled smoothly.

"Can I take the blindfold off now?" she asked with summoned annoyance, because she was really cringing inside at the thought of harpy hatchlings playing around with her battered body.

"No," the professor answered curtly, and with her sight-deprived, heightened senses, she felt the movement of air behind her where his robes must have billowed as he turned around and started walking away. Walking away?

"What are you doing?" she asked. She wasn't even ashamed that fear was showing in her voice and lost-looking form.

"Walking."

"Away? Now that I can smell things, you're leaving me to the harpies?" She wasn't getting shrill yet, but it was a close thing.

"Are you questioning my methods of teaching, Miss Granger?" he asked ingratiatingly.

Hermione felt that he wasn't angry. But there was a big, fat 'yet' attached to that. It was like he was poised to be angry; she needed to tread carefully.

"I'm just at a loss as to what I'm supposed to do," she demurred, folded her hands, and waited for an answer.

Which, of course, never came. Temporarily robbed of her eyesight, she strained to assess the slightest change in the space around her, nostrils flaring, searching and distinguishing scents. Her fingertips rubbed together, as if she were able to actually feel the texture of the air.

She was sure that if her ears could prick up and move around like that of a cat's, they'd be doing a lot of that right now.

Taut like a chord, she felt that she was able to sense all the minute disturbances about her. I am so lost, she thought, frustrated when her brain registered no sign of anything happening.

That's when the words came.

Hasn't it occurred to you to consider that it may as well be a part of the lesson?

She immediately knew they weren't her own. They sounded in her head so distinctly and in such a foreign way, she was sure it wasn't a conclusion to which her own mind came. Hermione almost jumped in surprise.

Was her mentor using his Legilimency on her? Could he even use it from afar, without looking into her eyes? But then again, she didn't think she even had the vaguest idea about the extent of his skills in this or other areas.

However, Hermione was sure it was not Legilimency. Though she had never had an opportunity to practice the art, she'd read all there was on the subject of it, and Black's family library had a lot to offer. Legilimency did not work in the way of talking. It only worked in the way of hearing and reading. One might be able to offer certain thoughts to the reading party while being under the spell, but Hermione sure as hell did not put her professor under it, Mage or not.

Yet, she was sure it came from him. The voice in her head was genderless and neutral, but the manner was definitely his, like there was some mental print attached to it that she was able to recognize.

She wondered if it was some residue of his thoughts or an unvoiced answer to her last statement. One thing she knew for sure. Somehow, this was the manifestation of her own little ability. Something about connecting things, though what was being connected in this particular instance was still questionable. Middler, indeed. Right now, she was definitely in the middle of something, and though she was able to pick up on a hint from Snape, it certainly did not help.

Another screech, coming from (possibly) a pterodactyl, ripped through the night. This time, it sounded much closer and, Hermione could swear, had a distinct, questioning tone to it, if such a thing were even possible with pterodactyl screams.

"Professor, I think I got it. I caught your stray thought. Maybe they are right, the Muggles, I mean, and thoughts are electrical impulses the brain produces, and I tuned into yours, even though it was probably floating around here for some time before I got it," she babbled, wringing her hands, the palms of which were getting sweaty and clammy.

Silence. She turned her head, searching for the smell of stone bramble juice. Nothing.

"Okay, I'm taking the blindfold off," she said in a shaky voice, and her hands moved to the silky cloth around her head.

She untied the knot and another one. And then another one. And one more. Queer. She fingered the knot. Definitely, tied over only two times. She untied two more knots, and just like that, there were another two.

Fine, plan B would be brute force. She tried to rip the damn thing off. No effect. It was like she couldn't even get the tiniest leverage over the offending piece of satin. Spellwork. Nice touch, Professor.

As she was thinking maliciously why Professor Snape would even need a spell that would hold a blindfold in place over someone's eyes, another gut-wrenching wail carved through the air. This time, there was a clear threat in it, and it sounded as if the horrendous creature was crouched in one of the trees surrounding the little clearing.

Hermione whipped around, trying to gauge her surroundings in vain and simultaneously decide on her next course of action. And that action had to be quick, she was sure, because the next thing she felt in the closest vicinity of her head was the swish of a giant wing.

Her breath accelerated to the point where it became too loud for her to rely on her hearing; everything around her was muffled by her heaving intakes of air, and blood beating in her ears under the influence of the most primal fear. That fear transcended any region of normality for Hermione because the spellbound blindfold prevented her from giving the said fear a shape and a substance.

Wings flapped to the right of her, and she felt a gust of air from the movement. She turned to the source, wand at the ready. Then the creature was behind her, gurgling and wailing. Deprived of the advantage of her sight, she couldn't even gather enough calmness and wit about her to cast a simple Protego. It didn't make her feel much better, since it was rather useless in case of a physical attack.

Something sandpapery and sickly wet ghosted her hand, and she screamed at the unexpected sensation.

"Leave off!" she yelled in the general direction of whatever being was about to make a bloodbath of her. Her blindfold was gathering moisture from her eyes, bitter tears of hurt and helpless anger. Was that also part of the lesson? Leaving her all alone, blindfolded and defenseless in the middle of a hostile environment to stave off some vile creature on her own? Not completely defenseless, her sensible inner voice chimed in. You still have your wand and magic, how about that? She brushed it off in favour of feeling horribly wronged by her horrible mentor. Her inner, petulant child called for simpler solutions, and running seemed like a perfect one.

The horrendous gurgling and cackling and the flapping of coriaceous wings intensified about her. The hellish being was probably salivating at the sight of her agony and loved to play with its food. She whipped around a few more times, firing off a few random Stunners, and took off. As soon as she reached the brim of the forest, she realized that, thanks to all her blindfolded jerking around, she had lost all sense of direction. Now her life was definitely forfeit.

Sobbing openly, she scrambled in her despair to perform a few spells she thought might help remove the blindfold. She was that close to using a Diffindo in a dangerous vicinity of her own face. She cursed herself and Snape for ever accepting the deal, and had a desperate desire to hug Ron one more time before something terrible devoured her alive.

A few seconds passed in excruciating, actionless silence, and she felt her magic start to rise. The anticipation of the unknown seemed much more frightening than the outright attack.

Hermione stood pressing her back to a large, gnarled tree, chest heaving, tears soaking the blasted piece of cloth. Wand stretched before her, she prepared for the imminent onslaught of the creature.

However, it did not come charging at her as she had expected. She sensed the movement a split second before she felt it: a slow, creepy scratching of what could only be a claw at the side of her neck.

Screaming bloody murder, she bolted, colliding with something hard; her hands beat at what seemed to be a disgusting mix of wet, slimy feathers and talons, and she ran with no sense of direction or purpose, wailing all the time, letting go of every restraint she had on herself, her very essence being diminished to one giant pit hole of primeval fear.

She hadn't even made it to the other side of the clearing when she felt like something huge sucked her in and swallowed her whole, and exploded within her and outside her, spilling in immense power from every single pore in her body, vibrating in every cell, no, in every molecule that constituted her. The feeling was so fundamental she couldn't even start to assess it. If she were a universe, it was as if she were having her own personal Big Bang.

And then, abruptly, as if a movie cut short, it stopped. Blissful nothingness claimed her.

She woke up and stretched like a lazy cat. The feeling of whatever bed she lay in was delightful. It was warm and cushiony in all the right places and smelled divinely of old, bushy pine trees soaked in fresh rain. She never wanted to leave the comfort and luxury of the wonderful bed. Something akin to flashes of light tickled her sensitive eyes behind the closed lids, and she ran a tentative hand over her face. No blindfold.

Opening her eyes just a fraction, she saw that it was still dark out. In fact, it was so dark, she could barely distinguish the darker silhouettes of pine branches above her, so still they seemed engraved into the clear stardom of the sky. Not in a bed, then. She sighed and tried to move. Complicated. Turning her head, she nuzzled what she thought was the most fluffy, downy pillow, but what in reality turned out to be a patch of silky, green moss. Okay, Warming and Cushioning Charms, too. And the flashing light was a Lumos spell at the end of a wand. Snape.

As soon as she saw his hovering figure, indignation washed over her in such a strong wave that she felt her muscles tense with it.

"You! You left me out there to fend off some vile creature I couldn't even see! How could you? What kind of teacher are you?" Hot tears burned her cold cheeks.

"The kind that is willing to acknowledge that you can't afford time to do this. And you were perfectly safe, Miss Granger," Snape replied with a calmness that Hermione found revolting.

"To do what, exactly? Stand around blindfolded?" she ground out in response.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, girl. To have your magic excess overflow. You've been a walking, talking gunpowder keg with a fire on top. How do you feel now?" he snapped in a businesslike tone, checking her pulse and performing a series of some diagnostic spells Hermione did not recognize.

"I didn't know I had magic excess. Feeling okay, I think."

In fact, when she did her own inner roll-call, she felt more than okay. She felt marvelous. It was like a weight was lifted off her, and a veil was ripped away, and a whole lot of other constrictions she didn't even know existed. But now that they were gone and she could feel their absence, she couldn't understand how was it even possible for her to function with all that burden. She was feeling able and fast and sharp and even...Merlin knows why...attractive.

"I feel... strangely light," she said in a gleeful daze, as if she had sniffed too much Sargasso Seaweed smoke.

"Small wonder. As soon as you are able to extricate your brain from your bout of self-adoration, you can see for yourself the amount of magic you had pent up. And its destructive force." He sounded irate, but rather lightly so. Once again, Hermione wondered how she managed not to get him in a strop.

"Why would I even have it?" Hermione asked, trying to regain control over her completely relaxed body.

"Have you ever heard of magical metabolism?" Ah, a lecture. That she could do, even lying in the middle of the forest at night after some kind of a magical blast.

"I've read about it, of course. It's the set of magical reactions in a witch's or a wizard's body, regulated by..."

"Oh, do stop your regurgitating of books before I have a punctured gall bladder case," her mentor cut in, effectively stopping Hermione's perfect recitation about to begin.

"So, is something off with the magical metabolism of a Mage?" Hermione asked, undeterred.

"Not off, as a matter of fact. It is unbalanced in a way that more magic is produced than is spent. Some scholars," here Snape paused, indicating with his very voice exactly how high his opinion of said scholars was, "insist that it is the source of our powers."

"And what do you think, Professor?" Hermione asked, immediately feeling a lagging astonishment at the fact that she actually wanted to know his opinion on the subject. Moreover, that it would matter to her more than the opinion of all those other scholars.

"I think that the pertinent knowledge is that an imbalance exists and needs to be handled. Mages are usually discovered at young age, when it is much easier to control and channel excess magic. Do you recall any out-of-regular-scale magical accidents in your childhood?" he asked, inclining his head slightly and folding his arms across his chest, like he usually did when he asked a particularly tricky question. Depending on the answer, a hefty loss or a sufficient acquisition of points usually followed. Somehow, the professor always knew who and what to ask so that the acquiring party would always be Slytherin, with the rare exception of an occasional Ravenclaw.

"No, I don't," she answered blandly. "But how was I able to keep it all down for so... long?"

"Graces, girl. It took you almost two hours to even start questioning my actions. You stood there, waiting, trusting, blindfolded in the middle of the forest, surrounded by Merlin knows what. And what did you do? You just waited to be instructed. No initiative, no defensive instincts kicking in. Like a proverbial lamb brought for the slaughter. Convention personified."

Hermione hated to think of herself as conventional.

"Am I not supposed to trust you, as my mentor?" she asked, her voice pitching up.

"Of course you are. It's fundamental. But there's trust and then there's... trust. Your trust is simplified. It's the kind of trust used to let others do your thinking. A Mage will require creativity, not mere rehashing of instructions and book paragraphs," Snape said, with a superior tone of someone in the know.

She felt torn between astonishment and hurt. On the one hand, she hated the bland image of herself in his head. She hated it even more that she wanted that image of her to change. She wanted to be creative, adventurous, interesting. On the other hand, she was still dealing with the daze his treatment put her in. Yes, he did say he felt freer now that they functioned on their own terms, but that much freer? She didn't even think he was that eager with his Slytherins. At least beyond the confines of their common room.

"So, now that it's gone... it'll be easier?"

"No. But it will be somewhat safer. Are you in a condition to get up?" Snape stretched out a hand to help her up, and she registered an increase in her heart rate when she took it. As soon as she was on her feet, she let go abruptly, suddenly scared and unprepared and confused by her own reactions. She almost wished he would go back to being a twat.

Luckily, what she saw around her covered up any discomfort the hand-in-hand situation might have created. The clearing was now very different. Where there was a carpet of dried, browned leaves, touched with the cold breath of impending winter, now green grass was stemming up. Tiny bells of lilies-of-the-valley swayed gently with barest movements of air. The sides of trees facing the clearing were adorned with fresh foliage.

"Oh, humbug! I made this?" She heard her own voice coming out in breathless wonderment.

"You also cleared the some of the sky above," Snape said with such contempt, as if he were talking of his favoured cauldron being melted beyond repair. Looking up, Hermione was amazed to see that, indeed, a perfectly round portion of the dome above the clearing was bright and starlit, low-travelling, fat clouds were encroaching on it from all sides. "You also made this," her mentor said, gesturing with a careless hand to a heap lying motionless at the side, in a bed of ivy and columbines.

"Is that..." she whispered and paused, unable to finish the question.

"Yes, you ridiculous witch. That is your monstrous attacker. A magical Dodo. Ugly as sin, but one of the most harmless and pathetically affectionate creatures known to wizardkind. You were perfectly safe. It just wanted to make friends. Though, I must admit, it worked perfectly for the fear factor in your overflow."

Oh, gods. Hermione's hands pulled at the wiry strands of her hair in despair and shame.

"Is it dead?" she asked, crestfallen, and looked with overwhelming pity at what looked like a mix of a bird and a Flobberworm, lying eerily still. Its dirty-pink skin peeked through filthy, gray feathers, which grew in all directions, as if the poor thing just came out of a whirlpool (which it probably did). The bird's head was huge and bald. In fact, some of it wasn't even covered by the pimply skin: a large portion of its off-white, lumpy skull was bone-bare around the huge, hideous beak. A long, purple tongue bulged out.

"I don't think so. The thing could survive a horde of giants stampeding all over it," Snape said. He came over to the Dodo and poked it unceremoniously with the pointed end of his boot. Hermione cringed at his callousness.

Leathery rudiments of wings flopped erratically, with a sound that was surprisingly loud for such tiny, ugly things. The bird opened its eyes and screeched madly, as those eyes rolled around.

Hermione, always the one to stand by the underdog, went to her knees and petted the slimy head, heedless of the bird's general atrocity.

"You poor thing! I'm so sorry, I am," she crooned, and petted the abnormally large head. The Dodo calmed immediately and held still, obviously enjoying the caress, if one were to judge by pleased gurgling, coming out of its beak.

Professor Snape looked positively like he was on the verge of losing his dinner.

"If you are quite done consorting with this... thing, it's getting rather chilly out, and I prefer the comfort of my quarters at this time at night," he said, eyeing his protégé and her obvious new project with a look that screamed 'hopeless'.

"Oh. You are right. And Professor?" Hermione paused, gauging his readiness to answer 'one of her inane questions'. He, apparently, didn't look too threatening because she went on. "Why did you say this outburst could be dangerous? All it did was put some flowers up, remove a couple of clouds and... knock the wind out of one bird."

"That is exactly why I took you to this place. The Forbidden Forest is full of magical anomalies, and this is one of them. Your outburst was seriously muffled."

"Alright then. Lead the way," she said, ready to go home and ponder the events of the night.

Professor Snape haughtily turned around in a swell of black cloth and started walking back to the castle.

Trailing behind him on light feet, Hermione noticed that the tail of his robes was splattered with little scarlet anemones. She snickered into her balled hand and decided to forgo notifying him of this new detail in his wardrobe. The Dodo hobbled clumsily behind her, emitting a squeak of delight now and again.