Burkalidge of the Brain

Chapter 6: Blurkalidge of the Brain

A/N: See disclaimer in previous chapters.

Being raised and being trained in Avalon left me with a great appreciation of the sisterhood of women. The bond that I shared with my sisters was indescribable. We were so close. Each woman who was at Avalon with me became my sister. We bonded with blood, and a great love was shared between us all. That bond became the key in our spell. Only with a bond as close as sisters could the spell be successful. I warn you now; do not attempt this spell with anyone whom you do not trust. This spell is about trust. Trust, love, and friendship.

If you perform this bond, you will discover this gift.

Excerpt from The Blessings of a Witch.

Severus Snape took a deep breath as he settled himself in front of the fire in his quarters. Dinner was over, and Minerva had patrols tonight; he, therefore, had the whole evening to himself. The house-elves had already been here, and his rooms were clean. The fire was crackling, and his teakettle and cup were set upon the hearth, no doubt filled with his favorite beverage, hot and ready to drink. Annoying as the creatures may be, there were definitely some advantages to having house-elves around, he thought as he picked up his cup and sniffed appreciatively.

Hot chocolate complete with a multitude of tiny marshmallows; perfect, he thought with satisfaction. The Hogwarts house-elves were the only ones that knew about the DADA Professor's guilty pleasure, and he allowed himself a small smile as he imagined how his students would react if they learned this. No doubt they imagined him drinking Firewhisky laced with arsenic.

Once he had enjoyed half a cup of his cocoa, he picked up his book. His mouth turned down at the corners as he opened the large tome. The Curse of Avalon contained the spell that Voldemort was planning on using within the next year. Snape was to help the Parkinson girl as she attempted to manipulate the female population at Hogwarts in order to convince the girls to lend their power to the Dark Lord. Snape pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb as he thought about Pansy Parkinson. She was doing exactly as her father asked; she was a perfect little servant to her Dark Lord. Despite the still hostile relationship between the Gryffindors and Slytherins, she was slowly building a friendship with Hermione Granger. He had been ordered to help the Slytherin witch as much as possible, so he had paired the two girls together in class, making it easy for Miss Parkinson to start her work on Miss Granger.

The two girls worked brilliantly together, and he wished that he could simply be a teacher and enjoy the fact that two of his most promising pupils were making excellent progress. The Dark Lord was pleased with Pansy's progress so far and, therefore, with Snape's efforts to help the girl. Now Severus needed to figure out how to keep Miss Granger from giving all of her trust to Miss Parkinson. Damn Gryffindors! They were too trusting. She probably already felt like they were best friends. He remembered over-hearing her a few years ago as she spouted off about inter-House friendships, unity, and other such nonsense. Snape snorted at her idealism. Slytherins and Gryffindors would never be able to overcome a rivalry as old as Hogwarts itself.

He turned back to the book in his hands, re-reading the information about the spell, or 'curse,' as it was called. He had read this portion of the book a dozen times before, and something just didn't ring true. He had a feeling he was missing something, and with a spell this complicated, he needed to know everything. He cursed the wizard who had written this particular narrative. The author had been incredibly long-winded about how evil this woman Morgaine had been, but extremely vague about the way her spell worked.

Severus Accio'd a slip of parchment and a quill, and he wrote down the procedure of the spell one more time, hoping it would become clear to him.

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The room was so silent you could hear a pin drop. Hermione and Pansy stood in front of the fire, waiting for someone to speak. Nine girls were looking back up at them with identical stunned expressions on their faces after hearing what the two witches had to say. Pansy had told her story about her father and Voldemort while Hermione had explained about Morgaine's book and outlined the spell and what they wanted to do.

It was Luna who finally broke the silence and spoke first. 'So, Professor Snape's a Death Eater.... I had wondered.' When she said this, Ginny was opening her mouth to say something, but Hermione caught her eyes and shook her head once. Ginny clamped her jaws quickly and stayed quiet. Hermione and Ginny were the only girls who knew Snape's role as a double agent.

Pansy replied to Luna, 'Yes, he is. He has been 'helping' me with this little project. He paired Hermione and me up together in DADA class so I could start making friends with her. The Dark Lord has ordered Snape to help me all year. We need to be really careful about what we say or do around him.'

Hermione held up the parchment that each girl had signed her name on.

'When you signed this, you promised to not tell anyone about what you heard tonight. If you don't want to be involved, you don't have to. You can leave now. Just because you were 'worthy' to see the title of the book doesn't mean you have to take this on. It will be really difficult.' Not one of the girls stood up and left the room, so Hermione took that as a good sign.

Pansy spoke next, her eyes moving from one girl to the next. 'If we do this, we are going to have to trust each other completely. We can't allow ourselves to get caught up in who is in what House, or anything like that. The spell won't work unless we see each other as sisters.... You need to be sure.'

It was Millicent Bulstrode who spoke next. 'I don't trust these girls yet. Come on; you're asking us to ignore the last five years and just trust each other? It's impossible. I'm not saying that we won't be able to trust each other eventually....' Hermione noticed that most of the girls nodded their heads in agreement. She interrupted before Millicent could go any further.

'I know. We know.... We aren't expecting it to be automatic. We have some time; we don't have to do this spell right away, and it seems as if Voldemort isn't expecting anything right away either.'

'Snape told The Dark Lord it would take almost nine months for us to prepare for the spell,' Pansy stated. 'I think as long as we do it this year, we will be way ahead of the Dark Lord.' Hermione was nodding in agreement.

'Okay, great... but how do we build trust? We can't exactly be seen together, right? I think everyone would notice if I popped over to the Gryffindor table to chat with Hermione over dinner,' Millicent said in a sarcastic tone.

'She's right. We don't have it too bad in Ravenclaw, but everyone knows that Gryffindors and Slytherins don't get along.' This was from Padma.

Pansy held up both hands to get everyone's attention. 'We know this. Hermione and I have been talking about this since the summer hols, and nobody knows about that. Nobody uses this room. We can meet here, and we will have to meet in secret. We don't know who we can trust, so we can't tell anybody about this little club.'

'Maybe we should make up a name,' Hermione proposed when Pansy called it a club, reminding her of Dumbledore's Army from last year.

Pansy raised her eyebrows and looked at Hermione incredulously. 'Are you joking?' she asked.

Hermione shook her head, but then noticed that each of the Slytherins wore identical expressions.

'Hermione, this isn't summer camp for Muggles. We are taking on the Dark Lord! We don't need a stupid club name. Next you'll probably suggest we elect a president and a treasurer,' Pansy protested. Hermione stiffened at Pansy's disdain.

Before she could reply, Ginny started laughing and was soon joined by the other girls.

Hermione relaxed and smiled back at Ginny.

'I suppose a club name is a bit childish,' she conceded.

After the laughter had died down, Susan Bones spoke up for the first time.

'We should probably get going soon. We've been here for a while.'

Some of the girls looked around in surprise; nobody had been paying attention to the time.

'You're right, we need to get going. Hermione and I will plan another time to get together, and we will let you all know,' Pansy said. 'We should plan on meeting at least once a week, probably more until we can do the spell. Right, Hermione?' she asked, looking at her 'partner.'

Hermione nodded. 'The spell will take some planning, and we need to get to know each other better... I also have one more idea.' When she added this, she glanced at Pansy warily.

Pansy's eyebrows went up; Hermione hadn't mentioned this to her yet.

Hermione turned to look at the other girls. 'Pansy has started teaching me Occlumency and Legilimency... I think we should all learn.'

'What is that?' Jarilyn asked, looking confused. Before Hermione could respond, Anjali spoke up. 'It's kind of like being able to enter into someone else's mind and find their memories or thoughts. Legilimency is entering into someone else's mind, while Occlumency is blocking your mind from somebody else. I already know how to do it actually.' Hermione didn't know Anjali very well at all, but she smiled at the other girl. It would make things easier if Pansy wasn't the only girl who could teach those particular skills.

'That's great, Anjali; you could help Pansy teach it,' Hermione told her. 'Does anybody else know how to do it?'

To Hermione's surprise, Daphne Greengrass, Millicent Bulstrode, and Luna Lovegood raised their hands.

Daphne chuckled at Hermione's expression. 'Occlumency and Legilimency are highly valued in Slytherin. It gives you a decided edge over your opponent,' she commented in a prideful voice.

'Luna? You know how to read minds?' Ginny asked.

'Well, it's not really reading minds, you know, but yes, my mother taught me before she died.' Luna's voice was soft as she explained. 'You would be surprised what you can get away with when people consider you to be loony. If I happen to stare into someone's eyes for too long, they don't suspect anything except for me being my loony self.'

Pansy smiled in appreciation when Luna said this. 'You sounded just like a Slytherin. Well,' said Hermione, looking around once more, 'I guess that leaves the rest of us to learn Occlumency and Legilimency.' Addressing Ginny, Jarilyn, Susan and Tracey, she said, 'Pansy had me start by clearing my mind of all thoughts every night before I go to bed.'

Pansy nodded. 'You do that, and we will start practicing the next time we meet. It won't take long to learn with this many teachers.'

Hermione and Pansy hung back as the other girls cleared out of the room quietly. It was Hermione who spoke first. 'Well, that went well, I think,' she said, turning to Pansy.

The other witch nodded.

'Good idea with the Occlumency and Legilimency lessons. That might help with the spell.'

'Yes, I figured it would help and have the added benefit of helping us all to get to know each other a little better,' Hermione explained further.

'So, we can plan on lessons for our next few meetings with the other girls?' Pansy asked.

Hermione flashed a secretive smile towards the Slytherin witch. 'Well, I think we should do lessons once a week, but I have a better idea for the next meeting. We could probably do this once a month.'

Pansy looked at her in askance. Hermione didn't usually keep secrets.

'Pansy, have you ever heard of a sleepover party?'

Later that week, on Friday night, Hermione, clad in her pajamas, entered a very silent seventh floor classroom. She was the last girl to arrive, as Harry and Ron had detained her in the common room.

She looked around the place. Everyone had received the message to meet here after curfew, and they had all made it. The girls, all in pajamas, sat awkwardly on the couches, looking bored. Some held a tea cup in their hands and sipped in silence while the Slytherins talked quietly among themselves.

Hermione laughed out loud, startling some of the girls.

'Well, it's a good thing I'm a Muggle-born! Obviously nobody here knows the first thing about a slumber party.' When none of the girls responded to this, she continued.

'A slumber party is a Muggle tradition in which girls get together and eat junk food and talk about sex, men, and beauty. It's a time to be as girly as we want to. ' She called to Seely; Pansy had asked the house-elf to help Hermione with whatever she would need for her slumber party, and Hermione had reluctantly accepted the help of the little creature.

She asked Seely to bring in a multitude of blankets and pillows and to set them up on the floor in front of the fire. She used her wand to move the couches back and instructed all the girls to sit on the floor with her. Hermione had asked her mother to send her the last six issues of Cosmopolitan magazine to her by Owl Post earlier this week. She pulled out her magazines and showed them to the other girls. She picked up one and found an article entitled 'The Ten Hottest Ways to Please Your Man!', and she started to read it aloud. It wasn't long before some of the girls started to giggle at what she was reading.

Hermione could feel herself turning red as the magazine became descriptive and explicit, so she put it down. The girls seemed to have loosened up a bit, and they were able to feel moderately comfortable around each other. They spent the next few hours of the night going through the racy magazines and laughing over the various articles that covered anything from sex to Muggle beauty tricks.

When beauty and make-up became the main topic of conversation, Hermione dug out Pansy's book on feminine magic. Each girl took a turn trying various glamours and beauty charms. It was close to 5:00 a.m. when the girls quietly snuck into their dormitories, just as the sun was raising. Hermione and Pansy left the classroom last, both feeling a sense of satisfaction that their first slumber party was such a success. The girls had gotten to know each other better and were well on the way of becoming friends and confidantes.

It felt like she had only been asleep for minutes when Hermione was awakened by someone shaking her and calling her name. She looked up groggily at Lavender and Parvati, who were both staring down at her. She blinked a few times and sat up in bed, pushing her unruly hair out of her eyes.

'What's going on?' she asked, her voice rough with sleep.

'Harry and Ron asked us to check on you, Hermione,' Parvati answered.

'Ron said you must be sick because you never sleep this late usually,' Lavender then piped in.

Hermione sighed in frustration. Why couldn't the boys let me have one lie in?

She reluctantly got out of bed and dressed herself; between her lessons with Pansy and her normal coursework, she hadn't spent very much time with her two friends lately. She would make it up to them this weekend before things got even busier.

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For the next two months, the girls met once or twice a week and practiced their Occlumency and Legilimency. Most of them were starting to make some real progress. Hermione herself had managed to completely block Pansy out of her mind and was getting better at Legilimency every time they met.

Hermione figured that Snape's lessons on non-verbal magic were making a big difference. They were learning how to focus their magic with their minds, and Occlumency and Legilimency were an extension of that. Pansy and Hermione were still paired together for their DADA classes, and the two girls started using their class time to get in some extra practice. The wonderful thing about non-verbal magic was that every pair of students was basically standing around and staring at each other. As long as Hermione and Pansy threw a few hexes every once in a while, they were free to practice entering and blocking each other's minds.

The girls met for another sleepover party late at night after Halloween's feast. As Hermione entered the room, she couldn't help but smile. Things were so different from two months ago, when they met for the first time. The girls were flopped on the floor or reclining on one of the various couches, all in their pajamas and looking comfortable and drowsy. Hermione was caught by surprise to see Millicent Bulstrode braiding Ginny's red hair as they giggled with Daphne Greengrass about a man featured in one of the 'Cosmo' magazines. A Slytherin witch was braiding a Gryffindor's hair; she never thought she would ever see anything like that. 'Millie, you are going to have to do that to my hair next,' Hermione claimed as she grabbed a cup of cocoa and sat next to Ginny.

Pansy smirked at this. 'Do you think you could tame that bushy mass?' she teased. The girls laughed at this; Hermione's hair had become a running joke. When they had started to learn new glamours, Hermione had been disappointed that not one was designed to tame hair like hers. It seemed she would have to resort to Sleekeazy's Hair Potion if she wanted to attain shiny, straight locks of hair.

Hermione sighed as she thought about her hair. She wondered if Ron would actually make some sort of romantic gesture if she had straight pretty hair. She started to dwell on the past few weeks. He had wanted to come to the Christmas party with her; that was a good sign. Just as she was remembering when she asked him, she felt someone in her mind. Hermione blinked and realized she was staring straight into Pansy's eyes. Pansy chuckled, not at all abashed that she had slipped into Hermione's mind.

'You looked sad, and since you were also looking right at me, I thought I would check,' Pansy explained. 'So, Hermione, you like Weasley? I always thought it might be Potter,' she mused.

Hermione shook her head. 'I'll leave Harry to Ginny here, actually,' she said as Ginny turned a delicate shade of pink. Even though she was dating Dean, most of the girls already knew of her attraction to Harry Potter.

The other girls had taken to listening to the conversation now, and it was Tracey who piped in next. 'Why do you like Ron Weasley?'

'Hey, watch it... He is my brother,' Ginny said, reacting to Tracey's question.

'Sorry, Ginny, there isn't anything wrong with him... I just don't see him with Hermione,' Tracey answered.

'Well, I don't know why I like him,' Hermione said thoughtfully. 'I just do. There has always been something there between us, ever since third year, I think...an attraction. I think that is why we are always fighting.'

Tracey nodded. 'I get that. It's just... what do you two have in common besides Harry Potter?'

'She has a point, Hermione,' Ginny interjected. 'I love my brother, but his interests are limited; you hate Quidditch, you are terrible at chess, and he could care less about the latest potions journal or anything within academia.'

Hermione was feeling a little shocked. She had never thought about this. She tended to tune Ron out when he talked about Quidditch or anything else that interested him. He tended to tune her out when she talked about her interests as well... or he would just get this glazed look in his eyes that made it obvious that she was talking way over his head.

It was Pansy who took Hermione's point of view in their debate about Ron.

'Come on, girls. It's not like we can choose who we are attracted to. If Hermione's attracted to Weasley, so be it. I wish her luck.'

'We all support you, Hermione,' Millicent said. 'Just think about what the other girls said. I, for one, think you would do better with someone older who is fascinated by research or something. That way, you can spend the rest of your lives talking about said research and being thoroughly boring!'

This lightened the mood up a bit, and Hermione laughed.

'You guys make really good points about Ron and me. I'll think about it.'

'Just be careful,' Luna said, affecting the dreamy look that had earned her the nickname loony. 'Thinking too hard can cause Blurkalidge of the brain.'

Most of the girls laughed at this; as they had gotten closer, they had realized that Luna enjoyed her reputation, and often times, she was just cultivating it.

Hermione thought about how Luna was always saying stuff like that. She had a wonderful imagination. Out of all the girls, Luna was by far the most creative and imaginative.

'Luna,' Hermione said, 'you just gave me a great idea!'

'Blurkalidge of the brain gave you a great idea?' Pansy asked.

'No, Luna's imagination gave me a great idea... Luna, do you think you could imagine something completely fake?'

'Sure I could. Any of us could probably come up with something,' Luna answered.

'Yes, probably, but I want to try and use Legilimency on you. See if you can make it convincing, details and everything. Okay?'

Luna nodded and seemed deep in thought for about a minute.

'Okay, I'm ready.'

Hermione held up her wand and met Luna's eyes. 'Legilimens!'

As Hermione entered Luna's mind, she was immediately thrown into what seemed to be a jungle. Luna was wearing Muggle camouflage and holding a large rifle as she ran through the trees. Hermione then saw a very strange animal up ahead; Luna seemed to be hunting it. It had the body shape of a cow with long, zebra-striped fur. It had large horns that zigzagged away from its head in an accordion-like pattern. The tableau was colorful and detailed, but it lacked a little dimension.

Hermione blinked and ended the spell.

'What did you see?' asked Luna.

'You were hunting a strange animal in the jungle, and you were dressed in Muggle camouflage,' Hermione answered.

Luna laughed at this. 'It worked! The animal is how I imagine a Crumple-Horned Snorkak would look!'

Hermione laughed along with the other girls.

'This is great! It's a step up from regular Occlumency. It's always apparent to the person performing Legilimency when someone is blocking them from their mind, but if we can project fake memories and thoughts....'

Pansy agreed. 'It's perfect! We could even trick the Dark Lord himself!'

'When I saw your image, Luna, it seemed a bit flat... We should all start working on this. With a little practice, I'd wager we could get it to look more authentic,' Hermione said thoughtfully.

'We need to work on this!' Pansy said in an excited voice. 'A few of us will be going home for the holidays. If Bellatrix Lestrange visits my house, she will use Legilimency on me. I don't want her to be suspicious. I could make up images of trying to follow Snape's orders.'

Hermione bit her lip. She hadn't thought of that. Pansy would have to be really careful, or she would be discovered.

'Pansy, let's meet three times a week,' Hermione proposed. 'With Quidditch in full swing now, Harry and Ron won't notice if I'm missing. We can also continue to practice during DADA class. It's really important that you perfect this before Christmas... That only gives us two months.'

Most of the girls decided to increase their meetings as well. Pansy had made them realize how useful this new skill could be.

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A/N: Well, how do you think things are shaping up so far? Please review and let me know.