Poison in your thoughts
Her orchard was silent as the grave.
Time is the best healer, everyone said; all wounds, great and small, could be healed, and every memory could fade enough for the bearer to not feel anymore.
Bollocks, Severus would say at anyone who told him so. Sometimes, a traumatic experience was growing along with the person, shifting but remaining constant in their lives. The mind, an otherwise incredible place, could also be a curse in such cases.
Every person carried a different landscape inside their heads; and Severus Snape, being the best Legilimens of his era, knew it well. He had been inside more people’s minds than he cared to admit, and he had seen all kinds of scenery.
Especially since he had started working as a Mind Healer.
It was an unexpected turn of his life, but he didn’t mind; his skills were getting honed on a daily basis, as he retrieved memories, unearthed traumas, reminded people of what was important.
But when Harry Potter, a decade after saving the world, knocked on his door for help, Severus briefly wondered whether he should have moved to the States instead.
Hermione is not doing well, he informed him. I am worried about my friend, Snape.
She’s the bloody Minister, Potter, he had practically laughed at the Boy-who-still-annoyed-him. It’s been two years and the whole wizarding community is thriving.
She has a fucking wall erected around her, and she won’t let us in.
So, Severus took it upon him to discover Hermione Granger’s mind. He expected to find some sort of a library –he didn’t expect anything else by the know-it-all–, but instead, he found himself inside an orchard, a deathly silence prevailing, unsettling him.
The trees were blooming beautifully.
Her mind was a beautiful place, as he knew it would; the memories he picked up bloomed to beautiful images. Little Hermione, getting love by her parents; the young witch, discovering the beauty of magic, getting revered as she worked and rose above her peers. Her friends, the solidarity she experienced when things got rough for the whole world; she was never fully alone, and the memories bloomed and gave her mind a beautiful detail.
It made him smile. He knew this girl –no, this strong, beautiful woman, their Minister– must have had a good start in her life in order to turn so nurturing.
Then, he noticed it…
Their fruit was poisonous and black.
She had erected such strong walls inside her own mind, as if attempting to drown her thoughts. And it was a painstaking process to glimpse behind those walls.
She wasn’t an Occlumens, he knew; how could she pull those tricks? And what did she hide?
All the times her parents resented her, pushed her to be the best and then didn’t show pride in her.
All the times she was ridiculed at school –not a Pureblood, not a Half-blood, not a popular girl except for when she did her friends’ homework.
The fear, the loneliness, the alienation. The way she saw the light dim from her parents’ eyes as she took their memories, and the way the light came back, along with their resentment after the war. She told everyone they wanted to stay in Australia; no one knew they had told her they were childless from now on.
Her need to be the best, to make herself accepted, loved. The ‘I don’t love you that way’, the looks of pity she received as her friends moved on without her. The notion that she would be at top, but alone.
Severus, still wandering around in her unconscious, picking up her memories, felt the need to stop. He couldn’t breathe; keeping so many things lidded can only get one so far before they lost their mind.
Hermione Granger, Minister of Magic; her mind was a beautiful, dark place, with so many unsaid things. And call it professional curiosity, but Severus Snape made a mental note to learn more about it when this session was over.