“beyond wandpoint” 008 by gingerbred
Mar. 19th, 2019 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beyondwandpoint“11 07-08a Fri - Sat - Dumbledore's Debriefing”
Hermione, Albus and Poppy
Originally Published: 2017-11-11 on AO3
Chapter: 008
Pairing: Hermione Granger / Severus Snape
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Professor Dumbledore leads Hermione into the private room at the Infirmary's rear and ends the Muffliato silencing her.
He gestures for her to take a seat on the bed and draws up the chair beside it to face her. In a soft voice, indicating her top with his wand, he asks, "Shall we get you cleaned up first?"
She nods, continuing to bite her lip in an effort to suppress the potion driven noises she's still prone to make. That has the added benefit of stifling any comment she might have been inclined towards as to how he could think she'd prefer to sit here in a bloody and tattered top. Her name's not 'Weasley' after all. But as her top knits together much as her lip had moments ago, it occurs to her the Headmaster was being considerate and trying to avoid traumatising her further. Her judgment is a little off right now, and she's being unfair.
Once her blouse is whole again, another flick of his wand has it clean, absolutely pristine, and no evidence remains of Professor Snape's Herculean effort this evening. Unexpectedly, that leaves her feeling bereft, as though the bloodstains had been a sort of monument, for the few minutes she'd noticed them, a testimony to his sacrifice on her behalf, now vanished without a trace. She can feel herself growing anxious at the thought.
After a moment's contemplation, she determines to see herself, her unharmed presence, as that monument instead, and instantly feels much better about the matter. She sits here, now, because he rescued her. It's that simple. It's probably not, but she can define things as she likes, thank you very much. And just like that, she no longer needs his blood on her clothing.
That was far too morbid, anyway. She can't run around like that. It's bad enough she has it on her hands. Figuratively speaking, of course. She turns those hands back and forth and rubs her fingers automatically at the thought. She examines them and imagines she can still smell his blood on her. It's pure fancy, nothing more; she hadn't noticed anything before. But maybe that was because it hardly registered when contrasted with the gallons of blood that had been poured on her shortly prior. Or because anything she might have thought she'd smelled, she had attributed to her lip anyway.
Before she can get lost even further down that strange rabbit hole, Professor Dumbledore pulls her out of her thoughts and begins to ask her about the events from earlier tonight. It's probably for the best.
The Headmaster speaks to Hermione for quite some time about what happened. For the most part, he has questions, plenty of questions. Some, however, are rather unexpected. She's a bit surprised, though, to discover that she has little trouble answering any of them, even if they concern aspects she hadn't regarded herself. She's not accustomed to observing without considering.
Realistically, of course, she'll do that far more often than she knows. Given the nature of the company she keeps, usually no one is in a position to point that out to her, and even if they could, she wouldn't be inclined to listen - their roles are too firmly established. And then, too, this evening she won't have been performing at full capacity, she acknowledges. Atypically, she gives herself a pass. That should last until morning.
Altogether more interesting, she decides, when all is said and done, is that she was not necessarily able to determine the reason for certain courses of questions.
The rudimentary facts are quickly established. She senses that the Professor occasionally examines her thoughts via Legilimency to determine the truthfulness of her statements. He's gentle as he does so, and it's more suspicion than certainty on her part that that is what he is doing.
Nevertheless, she's correct in her assessment.
She decides not to take it too personally. It was a highly emotional evening. It is not unreasonable to think that her take on the events could be biased, her view of the facts and subsequently her account thereof, possibly, skewed.
He double checks her story far more in the beginning than later in her narrative. She thinks that's because he's come to trust her version of events. That's only true in part. Later in the evening she was experiencing the effects of the potion, and it makes him very uncomfortable to view her thoughts through that lens. Then, too, as the hour progresses and the potion's effects fade, she becomes a more reliable witness. Additionally, he discovers she is much better at filtering those distortions from her retelling of events than he is. He simply doesn't know her well enough to have a good enough take on what she would have really thought, and what would have been purely potion induced.
For example, she makes a few statements about her opinions of the Potions Master and his actions that the Headmaster would have been unable to correctly assess from her thoughts alone given the potion in her system. She'll regret doing so by the sobering light of day, considering them unnecessary in addition to thoroughly embarrassing, and especially her use of certain descriptors in the process. But he finds it all far less superfluous than she thinks. Not that that would prove much of a consolation.
He's impressed with her honesty. Her willingness to speak of what must surely have been a mortifying experience, and that in great detail and with remarkable precision. Her recounting borders on being brutally open sometimes. Some of that can be put down to shock. Some is due to disassociation.
The discomfort he feels in hearing about it leaves him briefly ashamed. What must she feel having experienced it? But ultimately he has little time or inclination to humour such lines of thinking. It's a mental self-indulgence, nothing more. And of course it reminds him of darker times, indeed, that he doesn't care to revisit. But those thoughts, memories of his sister, her abuse, and his family's tragedy, lick at the back of his mind like little flames, burning most cruelly. He rarely thinks of it anymore, or just the end, Ariana's death, really. He Occludes until the thoughts fade, but his resolve strengthens.
The dynamics of the attack on Miss Granger naturally interest him greatly. This makes sense to her, inasmuch as it must surely be of tantamount importance to the Headmaster to understand the threat in his halls and to know who is behind it. He had realised after his initial Legilimency that she had been given some kind of potion. Hearing (and seeing) the details of it seems to greatly concern him. Rightly so. But he is slightly relieved to learn that Mr. Nott tried to dissuade the others from using the illicit potion. That his efforts were insufficient is secondary.
It does give the Headmaster pause to hear her tell how prominently Harry's attack on Mr. Malfoy last year played a role in tonight's events. The blond had railed on, elliptically, at length about it to her. While it could never have been in question that Harry would be expelled for his actions, of course not, Albus wonders if he mightn't have been a bit too lenient despite that.
He also gets the sense that forbidding Mr. Malfoy to speak of the attack may have made things worse. It was noticeable in her memories that he could only reference it obliquely and had to omit details in the presence of the other boys, and yet seemed to derive a good deal of satisfaction from her understanding of the events to which he referred. Albus resolves to speak to Severus about that, but then immediately hesitates and then rejects that plan, realising that that might be a sensitive topic for the man. Or perhaps it's simply cowardice on his part.
More surprising is the effect of the youngest Weasley boy's Halloween pranks. There was no restriction on Mr. Malfoy as to that particular incident, and he had scarcely been able to contain his vitriol when speaking of it. It clearly left a mark, oddly maybe more so than the attack it depicted. It had seemed in good fun at the time, Albus had thought, and truly an impressive bit of charms work with the luminescent tears. Clearly Ron's brothers' work. But in retrospect, perhaps they should have put a stop to it... He sighs.
Poppy enters at that moment and asks to speak to him. He leaves the room to join her at Severus' bedside, next to the room he had just occupied with Miss Granger. Albus neither closes the door behind him, nor places any sort of Privacy Charm, which Hermione now thinks she recognises as an invitation to eavesdrop and promptly does. She creeps closer, peering around the corner to observe them covertly and is incredibly relieved to hear the Potions Master is stabilised. Her sigh of relief, confirming both her presence and her response, yields an answering twinkle in the Headmaster's eyes.
"Albus, he's stable, but there's nothing more I can do for him at the moment. We'll just have to wait and see," the Matron updates him. "He's in bad shape, very bad shape, but of course he'll probably pull through." She waves her hand around vaguely. "He always does, somehow." She's noticeably exasperated and annoyed, but her equally apparent concern makes it clear: not with her patient. She's truly worried about him.
"You realise that's not because he should do, medically speaking. It's pure luck and unflagging stubbornness on his part. But that luck can't last forever. One of these days, he's not going to make it."
The Matron sounds angry at the Headmaster, clearly holding him in part responsible for the condition of her patient. She looks at the pale man stretched out on the sickbed next to her almost fondly, certainly sympathetically, "I have no idea how he survives this, Albus, or how much more he can take. He honestly shouldn't have been able to take what he already has." She strokes some of his long hair out of his face, tucking it gently behind his ear. "He won't be in good shape if he does wake, though. When. When he wakes." She sighs and shakes her head in obvious frustration.
"Is there anything we can do for him, Poppy?" The Headmaster's voice is gentle. He's not entirely without concern for the man lying next to him. That his hands are, metaphorically, tied is another matter. Surely there's something to be done for him, and he has the beginnings of an idea as to what.
"I haven't the foggiest, Albus. Not a clue. In addition to the physical toll all of this is taking, the mental anguish is most worrying. I swear, Albus, his strength of will is all that keeps him going some days, and I'm not at all sure how much more he can survive. Not just physically, you understand. The cost to him as a person is enormous.
"Even when the actual damage isn't so severe - but then, when is it not?" There's a huff of blackest humoured amusement to mask her pain. It fails completely. "The effect it has on his psyche is grave. Very grave. His dreams... Those nightmares!" She shakes her head again sadly, clearly agitated, and those might even be tears forming in the corner of her eyes. She's known him, cared for him, for the greater portion of twenty-six years. Too much of it has been hard to watch.
"He won't be able to keep this up much longer you know. You ask too much of him. And they keep demanding more of him." The disgust in her tone is clear. Her voice softens, it's almost pleading, "Does he speak to you, in any detail, of the things he faces?"
Albus has the decency to hesitate, blushing a little, before admitting that he does not. "No. Not really." He purses his lips and goes on, "He cannot. For security reasons, you understand..." Except they both know the explanation is rubbish. It's unlikely that You-Know-Who would ever have the chance to view the Headmaster's thoughts, his lackeys certainly hadn't the capabilities to do so, and even if that came to pass, there's actually no harm in Albus' knowing what his spy faces. On the contrary, it could easily be sold as establishing Severus' bonafides. It's really about plausible deniability and keeping his own robes clean. Expediently put, the situation can't be changed, and there's little point in both of them suffering through those harsh realities.
"Then you have to accept that his mind, his will may give out before his body finally does. Although considering some of the horrific things I've seen him subjected to recently, I don't know that it will make all that much difference."
"He's not weak."
"I didn't say he is," she rounds on him, with a surprising degree of vehemence. "Not by any stretch of the imagination. But if you need him to keep doing this, then you need to figure something out. That is a point of failure," she gestures angrily in the direction of the unconscious man, "and it cannot, will not, hold. I'd be stunned if he lasts another year."
Albus sighs deeply once more and politely refrains from pointing out that none of them may last another year as things currently stand, subconsciously rubbing his arm beneath its Notice-Me-Not. There's little to be won by doing so and robbing the woman of her illusions. With a sad shake of his head, he reaches gently for the Matron's elbow and steers her back towards the young witch's room.
"Thank you, Poppy. I shall give it some thought. Come, let us speak to Miss Granger. I think there is more to learn about what transpired tonight." Hermione has the good sense to scamper off to the room's cot when she hears this.
When the two return to her room, she's seated on the bed as though she had never left.