Ajna

II. Ajna

Misery and joy have the same shape in this world:

You may call the rose an open heart or a broken heart.

– Dard

~~~

From Hermione Granger's perfume notebooks:

Muggle and magical perfumes have much in common.

Indeed, magic itself is supposed to have its own, unique scent ...

~~~

22 December 2008

On the longest night of the year, my dreams are dark.

Naked and alone, I walk through the Hogwarts of old nightmares: abandoned and broken and cold. Not even Crookshanks is with me. And while he has long since passed away in life, he is always at my side in my dreams.

At first I am thankful that at least the scents that used to accompany this nightmare are absent. No longer do I smell the perfume of war: sweat of fear, stench of blood and vomit and excrement, odour of pain. Nor the sweet fragrance of long lost illusions and obsessions. There is no hint of grass, lawn, or meadow, freshly mown, growing or ripe. No whiff of parchment or paper, simple or precious. Not a sniff of skin or hair or anything alive.

Nothing.

Like Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in his mountain cave, for the first time in years I am not only unaware of any odour surrounding me, I cannot smell anything at all.

I wake empty and exhausted.

Dressed just in my nightgown (a modest affair of blue cotton that billows around my ankles), I creep down to the library and sitting room.

Severus is awake. Wrapped in shadows, he sits in the gloaming near the unshuttered window. Sparks of twilight from dying embers in the fireplace glister at his outstretched feet. Lurking outside, indigo tendrils of the small hours twine around his neck.

His right hand covers the scars on his neck. Old wounds still cause him pain. His left holds a kerchief or scarf I cannot recognise in the dark. He presses it to his face, to his mouth, to his nose, as if to consume the fabric or its scent.

But his posture betrays neither happiness nor content nostalgia at his indulgence.

Severus looks spent – and sullen.

I don't speak, just curl up in the other chair.

We sit in silence together until a hesitant winter sun rises.

Solstice has passed.

~~~

1 January 2009

With a deep breath, I straighten my shoulders and march up to Severus' desk to present my journal.

This diary is a fat, leather-bound tome, polished with cedar wood, rosewood and the essential oil of Fanged Geranium. It contains notes for everything I've done in the past year as Severus' journeywoman, everything I have attempted, accomplished, or worked on during the last 366 days.

And I really mean everything, from the smallest minutiae to the grandest projects: weekly schedules, order forms, shopping lists, scent descriptions, ingredient analyses, perfume formulae, marketing plans, price schemes.

When he doesn't even open the book for the ritual glance at the first and the last page, my stomach plummets. Chills run down my spine and shake my balled fists. Nausea uncoils lazily, snaking up to constrict my throat.

'You are failing,' he announces, each syllable dry and bright and brittle.

My eyes grow hot in their sockets. My mouth fills with saliva tasting of dread. I swallow hard.

Long ago I would have protested: 'But –'

Not so long ago I would demanded: 'How? Why –'

Today, I stay silent. That, at least, I have learned.

As journeywoman, he is my Master – not the professor who teaches his student even which shoes to wear on her travels. Nor the apprentice's master who guides his tenderfoot every step of the way. I must be beyond such coddling. Not that he ever was the type to provide it. But this is my journey, and –

'You do know that you are already an excellent perfume maker,' he interrupts my self-flagellation, 'otherwise I would never have accepted you as a journeywoman. You are aware that I do not take in apprentices.'

He delivers that compliment with the scathing tone I recall from my student days. Suddenly I don't know if I am closer to tears or to laughter.

Severus notices. I can see how the corners of his thin, sensitive mouth quirk. Just a little.

'You have seen to it that your professional background is unique.'

I must have frowned. Too often have I been ridiculed for attending a Muggle college in America; too frequently have I been looked upon askance for the choice of masters for my apprenticeship.

He raises a slender hand to forestall any objections.

'I, for my part, hold the owners of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab in high esteem, even if their ... shall we say ... idiosyncrasies and ... slightly ... unorthodox business practices of catering to Muggles as well as to the wizarding world ... disconcert the conservative members of the guild of alchemists. Their standards as potion and perfume makers are impeccable – and that is all that matters to me.'

Snape puts the index finger of his right hand to his lips, slowly stroking over his philtrum to his upper lip. 'More interesting than your choices of Muggle college education and magical apprenticeship, however, are the two years you spent with Rolf and Luna Scamander in South America,' he says softly. 'At Hogwarts you never seemed to care much for magical creatures – except for that orange menace that followed you around everywhere. And then you go off gallivanting in the jungles, playing hide and seek with wild beasts that would make Hagrid salivate.'

'I wasn't there for the creatures,' I reply defensively, which is true: Rolf was researching magnoliophytoid mammalia, magical hybrids of animals and flowering plants. I tagged along as a scent hunter.

'Of course.' A delicately raised eyebrow emphasises his gently derisive tone. 'I believe Luna Scamander is breeding some of those magical creatures you weren't there for rather successfully now. Orchid cats, discovered and named by one Hermione Granger. I hear they will be presented as one of the most prestigious projects of the Scamander Foundation at the May Fair this year.' That sounds almost like another compliment.

'The passiflora mustelidae didn't work out that well,' I remark dryly. Their strong scent and high fertility had inspired great hopes, but they turned out to be simply too unruly. Luna keeps sending me packages of their pleasantly fragrant faeces, though. I relax a fraction.

A swift frown, paired with a dismissive shake of his head, makes my pulse speed up.

'That you want to achieve mastery to further your ambition and your desire for perfection goes without saying,' he says coldly. 'Those were reasons not to accept your offer.'

My stomach twists into a sick knot. True, this journeywomanship is perhaps not what I imagined it to be – dragging Severus kicking and screaming into a new era of marketing and range of products. But it was fun.

Of course, gaining mastery in magical perfume making was never meant to be 'fun'.

I am aware of that.

'And this –' He taps my perfume notebook with a single, scornful finger. 'Your always complete lists. Your exacting schedules. Your rigorous records of our experiments. Your insightful essays. Your accurate fragrance analyses ...' He shakes his head.

'Not worth the parchment they are written on, much less the ink wasted on them,' he snarls suddenly. 'This is not a journal. This is not the story of a journey toward Mastery and its personal, spiritual, and ultimately magical transformation. This is at best the documentation for a perfume maker's "journées"; enough to prove that you have earned your daily wages, but no more than that.'

'Yet you are searching for something,' he says, his voice soft again, and his black eyes fixed on me with a penetrating gaze. 'You are looking for something beyond ambition, beyond successful marketing, beyond even the most beneficial or alluring creation of magical perfume.'

For a moment he holds his finger to his lips, as if to order me to remain silent. Then he lets his hand drop away.

'You never told me what you are looking for.' He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. 'As a child, you were always so eager to share your ...' He hesitates, and I cannot suppress a shiver of fear. But instead, his voice softens even more. '... your questions and your answers, and your sense of wonder regarding the world, magic, and all its miracles. I never presumed that you would reveal your innermost secrets in a heart-to-heart the very first week. But since you did choose me as your Master, I expected you to approach me eventually. Why you failed to do so, I cannot fathom. Procrastinating like that is quite out of character for the Hermione Granger I know.'

He rises to his feet and crosses his arms in front of his chest, the black spectre of my childhood and youth risen once more. He narrows his eyes. 'You. Will. Tell. Me. Now. What the fuck you are looking for.'

I jump up to meet him face to face. Or chin to forehead, to be completely accurate. Concentrating on his upmost button, I somehow manage to throw up my Occlumentic shields. I think of pudding. All kinds of soft, warm, slimy, slippery pudding. Vanilla. Chocolate. Caramel.

But he doesn't even try Legilimency.

He just stares at me as if his eyes can burn me on the spot. I guess that's a pretty accurate assessment of the situation, too.

The problem is – I don't know the correct answer.

I know when I started looking, of course. 2 September 1996. When my world stopped smelling the way it was supposed to.

But I never believed in what I was searching for in the first place!

Suddenly he reaches for me, and his touch is shockingly gentle – just a hint of a hold above my elbows, intended to control my attention, not to intimidate me.

'Tell me,' he – asks. Severus Snape would never beg. 'I would have failed you if you do not trust me at least that much.'

'What?' The question escapes my lips as an indignant squeak. As if I'd ever – but of course I have – but of course now I'd never –

'I –'

What I am looking for is the recipe for Amortentia, because I want to know if it's for real. What I am searching for is what I smelled in Slughorn's Amortentia all those years ago.

Because if it was real, and I never find out what I smelled then, I will never know –

He stares at me.

I hate clichés. But I could bloody drown in that black, smouldering, fathomless gaze. Yes. Smouldering and fathomless at the same time. I am aware of the thoughts and emotions undulating somewhere far below the surface. But all I can see is black. Darkness. Mesmerizing, hypnotising blackness.

'Love,' I gasp.

And of course my tears are choosing that exact moment to overflow. I can feel them on my cheeks, childish, sticky, and hot, but I hardly dare to breathe, much less move.

'In that case,' he whispers, 'you have chosen the wrong Master.'

oooOooo