Meeting of Minds

Author's Notes: As in a previous instance, I have combined two drabbles into one chapter. The dates and words of the Dictionary Drabble challenge are included at the start of each chapter. I hope that you enjoy.

June 28th

1. capacious

2. glutinous

3. forlorn

4. Cockaigne

5. harbinger

6. mazy

7. interpolate

Dancing through thoughts, dreams, desires, fears and instincts, she paused, almost breathless with delight, as she surveyed the end of the mazy travels through the Healer's mind. Here was her home away from home! She laughed out and gloried in the same sound bursting from the man's lungs.

So much time had been wasted in trying to take control when all she had needed was to interpolate herself within his thinking and skew it. Once he began to think in a similar way, he had welcomed her in as some newer and better aspect of himself. It was delicious!

She spoke for him, drawing upon his own knowledge and completely revelling in the freedom. She tested her control through a variety of strategies, and when she was confident that she had autonomy, she had visited Snape.

She had hoped to see some sign of suffering on his pale, thin features, but they were smooth and expressionless; all she had to assuage her disappointment was her own faith in Nagini's venom. Climbing up onto the cot, she straddled his thin form and crossed her arms upon his barely moving chest. Her eyes caught sight of the red scarring on his skin: four gashes across his throat from where the snake had sunk in her fangs. Overwhelmed, she slid up him, pressed her lips against the healed wound and flicked out her tongue. The flesh within the scar was smooth, edged by a firm ridge of tissue before becoming supple and coarser skin; no doubt the fine hairs and short stubble added the texture.

Easing back, she saw her spittle glistening on his neck, and she shivered at the sight...had Nagini felt the same flicker of pleasure? Tasted him just as she had done? Scowling, she turned her thoughts away from another who had been favoured more than she.

Staring down at his supine form, she contemplated opening up that wound, letting the blood flow freely, but that would be a gentle death. It would also be the harbinger of her own failure. Her ambitions had grown since she had set her purpose, and now, she sought to escape this prison of a hospital, and hidden within the not-so Cockaigne haven of the Healer's head, she could do what she wanted...and if she was caught... well, no matter! All she needed was another host for her wandering mind.

Staring down at Snape while her mind drifted over the possibilities, she felt something shift deep down. Disorientated and confused, she fell against his body and gripped his bed-linen for support. Closing her eyes and panting as her head swam and her guts trembled, she had the image of a barren landscape explode inside her mind. Image after image bombarded her, and she was left reeling at the sense of intense loneliness, longing and despair.

On instinct, she resorted to Occlumency, and the mental storm ceased almost immediately. Lifting herself up, she felt light-headed with the realisation...she had entered Snape's mind!

~X~

"You're not stopping me, Miss Granger," he said softly. "I would say that you actually enjoy having me rummaging around in your capacious mind."

She gritted her teeth and stifled the mounting anger. She could do this... She had to do this. Through the scenes of her past terrors and errors, she could see his face as he witnessed the worst of her life. The forehead was furrowed and beaded with sweat, and his own jaw was tightly clenched with the effort of performing Legilimency with a wand that wasn't his own. A wave of despair crashed down upon her; he was weakened, and yet she still couldn't oust him from her mind!

With a pained howl, she collapsed, and Lucius surged forward at the sudden lack of resistance. Momentarily dazed by the speed through which he rifled her brain, he struggled to withdraw from her suddenly glutinous mind, and just as she curled up and silently wept, so he sat there, head spinning and stomach churning.

Breathing hard due to wielding an uncooperative wand, he settled back into the plush chair generously provided by the Room of Requirement and studied her. It still bemused him that she had agreed to work with him, and not for the first time, he tried to deduce why she would put herself through all this for Severus Snape. What compelled her? The memories that he had called up had been as vague as he could make them...some sense of propriety had held him from delving too deeply into her troubled psyche...and from them, he could hazard a guess that she somehow needed to cure Severus, but what motivated that need, he had no idea.

The forlorn witch slumped in the chair before him seemed so disparate to the one who had suffered the Cruciatus so magnificently and still had the wherewithal to actually lie. But the war had done so much to so many; so long as she managed to bring Severus back to him, then he would do what he could for her... for him.

~X~

The tapping of claws against stone woke him, and while brushing sleep from his eyes, he slid out from under the covers and moved over to unlatch the shutter. In the weak light from the full moon, he saw the dark outline of an owl on the windowsill. It hooted petulantly at him...maybe for his tardiness...and then extended its leg. Shivering from the bitter cold, Draco quickly took the proffered note and thanked the owl which promptly clicked its beak and silently glided away.

Hastily closing the shutters, he rushed back to the warmth of his bed and in the candlelight read the letter.

Draco,

Father

Rereading the short missive, he felt a mix of comfort and frustration: comfort because his father had risked his freedom to contact him, and frustration because that risk had been so obviously pointless.

July 5th

1. indigent

2. condign

3. laconic

4. tutelage

5. dapple

6. meticulous

7. palaver

A portion of the heavens had darkened and gathered itself together into the promise of a terrible storm. Being indigent in this already foreboding realm, he felt flutterings of panic in his guts at the sight of it. It seemed that the onset of such potential rampage had also affected the ravens; his travelling companions had squabbled raucously for some time before parting into two separate and vicious groups.

It seemed that now, he had a direction, and that was 'away'. With the hope that the slender river would lead him both away from the storm and to a more favourable location, he stood and started to make his way along the thin gravel strip between river and resistant gorse. After a few steps, the ravens, with a surprisingly laconic cawing, took to flight to dapple the portentous sky before forming two disturbing conspiracies: one to shadow him, and the other to seek the storm.

~X~

Some noise must have penetrated her slumber because she sat bolt upright with a terrible sense of being watched. Quickly brushing aside errant strands of hair that had slipped over her face during her short and fitful doze, she peered down the aisle, but it was empty. Still feeling uneasy, she sighed and packed away her parchments and books; she shouldn't have fallen asleep in the library, and the crick in her neck was a condign result of pushing herself too hard.

With chagrin, Hermione stood and sauntered out of the library. At the door, however, she glanced back, but the library was as empty as it had been when she had arrived. Shivering at the bizarre discomfort in her haven, she let the door whisper shut behind her and headed for her room.

Within the soft confines of her bed, her mind drifted through the strange sequence of events that had caused her to be under Lucius Malfoy's tutelage as she strived to learn Occlumency. It seemed years ago that she had demanded to see Snape and wept beside him, pouring out her words of solace and forgiveness and begging him to wake up. Inhaling deeply, she turned onto her side and gazed unseeingly at the wall and the shifting shadows created by the flame from the candle which danced in the welcomed draft. A stronger gust rattled the shutter, and her eyes darted up at the sudden, harsh noise; satisfied that it was just the wind, she relaxed, but with her mind sharper, she caught sight of something resting on her desk... Something that shouldn't be there!

Slipping out of bed, she stepped over and sat down on the cushioned chair, her eyes and fingers drawn to the square piece of paper that she knew had been locked in her trunk. Her fingers plucked it from the table, and she opened up the well-worn creases, her breathing short and shallow as the implications of the misplaced note rattled through her mind...someone had been messing with her personal belongings!

The essential note had been painstakingly constructed in the days following her first visit to Sub Rosa, and it was a list of the things that she would need in readiness to perform what was described in Visions in Another Mind. Chewing her lip, she thought back on the odd warning in Meadowes' letter. Other things suddenly clamoured for attention; the feeling of being watched, the palaver about things being lost, and the surprise at the fact that certain areas of the castle were looking far more neglected than usual.

Nausea welled-up at the thought of the house-elves being employed to keep a closer eye on the students; being such meticulous creatures, they would be the perfect gatherers of information. Crushing the paper in her fist, she wondered how much 'they' knew and if her most precious plan was at risk.