Lessons

Chapter 7 – Lessons

"Again."

She raised a trembling hand and pointed her wand at him.

"Imperio." It came out a soft whisper. She'd long since learnt that shouting spells would only bring disdain from the man opposite her. Usually, they worked together in silence, sparks of magic flying between them without words. She was still very far from mastering this particular spell non-verbally, however. In truth, she was far from mastering it at all, judging by the way he mockingly lifted his hand in a lazy imitation of the movement she'd silently requested from his mind.

"Are you getting tired, Hermione?" he asked, shrugging slightly as though her curse was nothing more than a light blanket which he could drop at a whim.

"Yes," she admitted, albeit reluctantly. They had worked without pause for most of the day, and it hadn't been a light workout. Her robes clung to her body, damp with perspiration, and an ache was growing at the small of her back, signalling too many hours of working on her feet.

"Good," he said, a new sharpness shining from his dark eyes. "Now, again." A flash of dark purple surged towards her and she narrowly dodged, too exhausted to perform a sufficient Shield Charm. He advanced upon her as she rolled, feeling every stone in the cold floor leave their mark on her body. Swallowing hard, she focused all her strength and raised her wand.

"Imperio!" Frustration and exhaustion made her voice rise slightly despite her efforts to keep it calm, and she felt a pang of hopelessness go through her. This time, the command burst forth from her mind as a desperate plea, and she'd mentally acknowledged yet another failure when Severus' left arm suddenly jerked upward. Astonished, she blinked and looked back more intently. His eyes were slightly unfocused and his arm was still above his head. Swallowing, she realised that not only had she apparently managed to cast the spell successfully, but he wasn't yet fighting it. Closing her eyes, she focused inward.

"Stand on one leg." The silent command was issued calmly, but not immediately followed. Instead, some of the focus seemed to come back to his eyes, attention flashing momentarily across the black and white. A sense of desperation gripped her and she pushed again. This time, his leg rose gracefully from the floor. Why?

Looking inside herself, scanning through tome after tome in her inner library, she sought an explanation and came up empty. Ignoring the foreshadowing trembles in her body that warned her that her energy reserves were almost up, she issued a line of mental orders, watching every reaction with the outmost care. Her mind shouted, whispered, cajoled and pushed. It pleaded, threatened and made love in quick succession. When she'd seen enough, she walked close, raised a hand to his cheek and caressed him softly.

"Come back to me."

The glassiness vanished, and she met the focused gaze of her Potions professor, which seemed to burn into hers. They stood frozen for a long moment before he raised his hand to hers and lowered it from his cheek, breaking contact.

"I believe you are beginning to learn," he stated, and she felt a surge of pride. "Now tell me your conclusions."

"You only obeyed me when I was desperate for you to," she answered. "When I truly needed you to."

"The Imperius Curse is at its strongest when applied to a person's greatest weakness, and the greater the weakness, the stronger the curse. I find it rather disconcerting that you should succeed by applying that particular emotion."

She was silent for a long while.

"I see why you would think that," she finally said, looking up at him. "But I'm not able to stop the sense of comfort I feel at the thought that you would care for me."

"Then you have to learn," he stated bluntly, causing her to flinch slightly. "Being as close as we are and working as intimately as we do, affection is a trap easily fallen into. We cannot afford this, certainly not at this stage. I had thought that the Somnium Potion would be strong enough to counter this, but my reaction to your Imperius Curse suggests that a deeper level of control is needed. We will both have to work harder on closing ourselves off from one another."

"I know." Her voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed the emotion behind it. He stepped close and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her slightly to bring back focus.

"Do you really, Hermione?" he demanded. "It is vital that you truly grasp the situation. You are in no way important enough to the Dark Lord for any stronger attachment to be allowed between us at the present time. If he sees love in you, he will use it as he would use a knife to your throat, and if he sees love in me... we are both extremely dead."

She blinked but didn't look away. He could see that she was trying hard to control herself. He pushed his point further.

"You will get to join the circle, as you know, but that is only the first step in His servitude. The first circle is only a brush on the surface, and a myriad spheres lie beneath it, each more terrible and utterly seductive than the next. You earn your descent through these spheres through faithful service, and the deeper you get, the more of a claim the Dark Lord has over you."

He paused for effect, his voice dropping a few notes as he drew her in, her attention locked to him as fully as a snake's before its charmer.

"I am the Dark Lord's most faithful servant, Hermione. I have descended to the innermost sphere, and that goes far beyond simple servitude. He owns my loyalty in every way, down to the last thought and the most ethereal shred of my soul. I have no loyalty but to Him and no love other than the love to serve. As long as He lives, my emotions are not mine to give as I am bound more firmly than any slave to his master or any priest to his God. With my body and mind, I may find pleasure where I please, but my soul--my love--has to belong to Him only, or my betrayal will be open and complete."

He raised his hand and touched her cheek in a soft caress, taking pleasure in the way she leaned into his touch and her lips brushed against his skin.

"You knew that this was always going to be exceptionally difficult. It is foolish of Dumbledore to insist on this plan, but insist he does. It is accurate that should you succeed in becoming a true Death Eater, you will help Potter immensely. You two discovered an ancient ritual, and one which most certainly is powerful enough to forever destroy the Dark Lord--but in order for it to fully work, you need to amass power and you need, above all, to be able to contrast Harry Potter. Where he is pure, you need to be corrupted. Where he is impetuous, you need to be calm. Where he is solid, you need to be immaterial, and where he is alive, you need to be dead." A lone tear reached his thumb, and he gently brushed it away. "You are the sacrificial lamb, Hermione, and Dumbledore will not come to your rescue. He has picked his knight, and all will be determined through one man and one prophecy. You need to accept this."

He lowered his voice to a mere whisper as he leaned in and gathered her in his arms.

"Of course, as is the case with Wizard's Chess, the pawns of the game might not move towards their doom as docilely as either master would like." A shuddering breath against his shoulder told him that she had understood, and he relaxed somewhat. He might be deadly wrong in tying this girl to his fate, but the point where this development could have been prevented had been passed several exits ago. By sharing his blood with her, they would never be completely free of each other. Hermione Snape had entered the world, and Miss Granger had forever departed. He would have to ride out the darkness, so ride it out he would. Burying his face in her hair, he easily collected her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom. The next lesson would have to wait another day.

"Prove to me that you don't love me."

It was late morning, and light was shining through the enchanted windows as they lounged together amongst ruffled sheets. She rolled over from her back to lean over him, popping her head up on one hand as she lazily drew soft spirals on his chest with the other.

"I don't love you," she said, almost conversationally.

"Prove it," he insisted.

Boldly, she looked him in the eye, inviting him to enter her mind. He raised his wand and uttered the spell, searching for a long time before drawing back.

"Well?" she asked, smiling at him.

"Top marks, Miss Granger," he retorted. "I would almost go so far as to claim to be quite proud of you. However," He sat up against the headboard, reaching for a glass of water on the bedside table. "An unguarded mind is not the only thing which can betray you."

"I suppose not," she said, thinking about his reaction to her Imperius Curse a few weeks back. He had reacted to her need for him then, which wasn't the same thing as saying that he loved her, of course, but it demonstrated a greater extent of involvement than what was prudent in their case. "What else should I practice?"

"Generally, I would advise detachment and passivity," he answered. "Torture of a suspected loved one usually has a way of coaxing the truth from people, as do situations which are set up to inspire jealousy. Now," he moved away from the bed and wrapped a robe around his body, "since I am who I am in the Dark Lord's circle, he is unlikely to torture me just to see how much leverage he can get against you through that particular technique, and jealousy is most a most unreliable emotion. His first weapon, should he want to know your heart, would undoubtedly be Legilimency. There's no real reason to fear that you will fail this test as you are now, and especially not after a few more months of Albus' tutorials, but one can always be taken by surprise." The same second he uttered these words, the room suddenly seemed to fill with dark smoke, making her eyes water. She blinked twice and opened them again, only to freeze in shock as a form materialized itself from the smoke. A man fell to the floor, blood everywhere and quite unmistakably dead. He was naked from the waist up and indescribably pale where the skin was not covered in half-dried blood. His hair was dark and caked with mud. She tried to make out his face, but it seemed oddly out of focus. Forcing the paralysing shock back, she struggled to rouse the part of her brain that was used to analysis and logical conclusions. She took a deep breath and forced herself to remain on the bed and not rush to the dead man's side. She knew where she was, and she knew the amount of protective wards that were placed on these chambers alone. Furthermore, she was inside Hogwarts castle, which provided additional security. No one could have sent a dead man into Severus' bedroom by magic without his express permission, and she was quite sure that, though this most certainly was a test, he would not go so far as to summon a dead man into his own quarters. At least, so she hoped.

In a flash, it became clear to her. The man lying dead before her was most likely a Boggart, and the test consisted in what form it would take for her. Looking more closely, she realised that the form was actually shifting slightly, seemingly having a hard time to decide whose corpse it should parade as. Concentrating hard, she shot it a panicked, pleading look and forced out a sob.

"Oh, God! Harry!" she cried, willing her mind to conjure scenarios of her friend. Cold, dead, Ginny by his side, choking back sobs, Voldemort triumphant... Immediately, the features grew more pronounced, broken glasses forming in front of the unseeing eyes.

"Try again."

She almost jumped at the sound. Severus's voice was strained, and he sounded far from pleased. Shaking herself out of the horrific visions in her mind, she refocused. The dead form twitched slightly and seemed to grow, turning into a severely mutilated Neville Longbottom. She couldn't hold back a choking sound as her mind fought with the creature, her determination and control severely damaged by the sight of a long gash across Neville's throat, blood covering most of his torso.

Bang! She didn't even realise that she had raised her wand. The form turned into Ron, red hair in horribly sharp contrast against his deathly pale skin; then Ginny, naked and twisted with long, deep claw marks running over her breasts and thighs...

"You need to focus your fear," Snape's voice came firm and demanding from somewhere outside her range of vision. "These are all useless and will only be used against you. Now, focus!"

A feeling of light panic now growing inside her, she searched her mind for something better, something stronger, delving into her deepest, darkest memories in a twisted form of Legilimency; reaching for the shadows inside her soul that she'd first felt during the ritual which opened her up to the Wild Magic of creation. Opening doors at the bottom compartments of her mind, she finally found what she was looking for and allowed the spine-crushing fear to grip her momentarily. The dead man disappeared in a wisp of smoke, and a small silver object fell to the floor. A hand mirror, small and inconspicuous, but she knew that if she took hold of it and gazed into the glass, the petrifying eyes of a gigantic snake would be the last thing she'd see before eternal darkness. She stared, horrified, as the mirror rose from the floor and slowly made its way towards her. Before it could get close, a spray of golden stars made contact, and the object vanished into a puff of smoke, which spiralled into a black box. Letting out a shaking breath, Hermione looked up and met the eyes of her professor. A small smile played on his lips.

"Very good. Now let's see your Patronus."

2008-12-08

A/N: This story has been abandoned. I'm very sorry about that to all of you who liked it and stuck with it this far. There are two reasons for this decision. Firstly, these were started in 2004 and when I went back to finish them, I realised that I wasn't the same person anymore. 2004 was a pretty dark place, and that darkness is woven so tightly into the stories, I don't really want to take them where I fear they would need to go. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure you would either. Second reason is that I've lost faith in the SS/HG pairing. I don't see it anymore. I don't believe that it could work anymore. I tried to. I really did. I joined the 2008 SS/HG exchange to sort of try to rekindle with this pairing again, but instead, it ended up being the final nail to the coffin, of sorts. (The fic that came out of it is one of my favourite pieces of fiction ever, though, and it will be posted here after the reveal, so look out for that.)

Thanks again for all the comments and lovely support. Big hugs to you all. /Red