Hypnos

Chapter 3


DISCLAIMER:

This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Reviews are welcome.

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“Very well, Miss Granger. You’re now asleep. Deeply asleep, and you’re feeling completely at ease, and relaxed. Nothing can hurt you anymore. You’re safe now, here with me. You’re safe.” And you’re a son of a bitch, Snape.

Hermione seemed to relax further at the sound of his voice whispered into her ear. She even leant her head back against the cbackback with what sounded like a sigh of relief.

“I know you’re so tired, and your body hurts so. Let it go, Miss Granger. Forget about your pain, forget about your hurt. Just let your mind drift, and it will all go away. Can you feel it?” He made his voice the silkiest he could here. “Can you feel it go away? It’s such a relief, as your mind drifts away. As your mind empties.”

He paused for a moment, allowing his words to sink in. “Your mind is completely empty now, Miss Granger. A void. Nothing to think about. Nothing to worry about. Just peace, and forgetfulness.”

Hermione sighed again, only this time her relief seemed to be even deeper. Snape wondered for a moment. He knew from his past experience as an interrogator that some subjects reacted well to direct commands under hypnosis, whereas others increased their unconscious resistance exponentially if addressed in an authoritarian manner, and had to be approached in more indirect ways. He suspected that Hermione would be one of the latter, given her irritating self-sufficiency back when she was the School Prodigy, and her past history of disregard for the rules and authority in general. However, she had reacted to his suggestions rather well, indeed much better than he had expected. Hm. We’ll have to see.

“Yet in this emptiness you can still hear my voice, Miss Granger, can’t you. It’s all you can hear – it is warm, and comforting, aneasieasing.” Here he reinforced the natural huskiness of his voice with a slight flush charm which would make the sound of his voice creep and tingle throughout her body. “There is nothing else. Nothing else matters at all, except my voice. Listen to my voice, Miss Granger, feel how it fills your empty mind with its warmth. It’s so very pleasurable. Can you feel it?”

At this she gave a sort of low moan while she writhed slightly against the chairback. He took that for assent, and switched to a more intimate mode, all the while despising himself intensely.

“Very well, Hermione. You’re doing very well. Now your mind is empty, and you are only aware of my voice. But you can still talk to me, can you not, Hermione?”

She moaned inarticulately again in response. Snape frowned slightly. “Hermione? Can you talk to me?”

She moaned and writhed once again, as if struggling, but this time she uttered something similar to a long, drawn-out “Yes”.

That’s odd. By now sho should be giving me coherent answers, and she should be calmer. “Hermione, now as I ask you questions, you will notice that certain images appear in your mind. I want you to describe those images, which are the answers to my questions. Do you understand?” Hermione didn’t say anything, so he pressed further on: “Hermione. Do you understand?”

Still she said nothing. Somewhat alarmed, he noticed an irritation mounting in himself which he hadn’t felt – well, actually, since he had the insufferable know-it-all in his Potions class. He allowed an edge of sharpness to cut into his voice: “Can you understand me, Miss Granger, or must I make myself clearer?”

The effect was immediate. Hermione sat up straight against the chairback and murmured: “Yes, I understand.”

A curious change seemed to have come over Hermione in her trance. At first she had become relaxed and tranquil, forgetting her pain and her fear as she allowed herself to be lulled by Snape’s voice. But now it was as if the warming charm which he had cast on her had gained intensity, and a heady flush had spread all over her skin: he could see the blood in her cheeks, the new redness of her lips, a thin veil of sweat breaking out at her hairline. She almost looked as if she were congested; and indeed, on looking down for a moment, Snape found that it was not only her lips which seemed to be swollen by the sudden blood rush. What the… she’s aroused? he thought in amazement, staring at the tiny nubs which pointed out towards the flames through the front of her blouse. Hell.

Against his most deeply rooted empiricist instincts as a potions master, he decided to ignore the evidence for the time being, and go on with the task at hand. “Ahem… Very well, Miss Granger. Now I want you to tell me what happened two nights ago, when you were left at Hogwarts’s gates.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there,” said Hermione in a muffled voice.

“It doesn’t matter, Miss Granger. As I told you, what you see in your mind will be the answer to my question. It’s got nothing to do with you. Now, what did you see when I asked you about that night?”

“The… the moor,” stuttered Hermione.

“The moor. Very good. The moor around Hogwarts?”

“No… Yes. The moor around Hogwarts, but also… somewhere else.”

Another moor? Yorkshire, perhaps? Hm. The Malfoys certainly do have a manor there. “Who was t, He, Hermione? Who was on the moor?”

“Death Eaters. Three. Tall, with masks. One smelt of garlic.”

Snape was surprised by the matter-of-factedness with which she described her captors, but then this part of her account didn’t seem to be troubling her much once he had established that she only had to describe what she “saw”, with no personal implication of her own person in the story. Hermione Granger had always had an intense dislike of speaking from her own subjective point of view, as he remembered. Always entrenching herself behind walls of books, speaking in the impersonal in a manner absolutely ridiculous for a thirteen-year-old: “It is believed that… it is generally thought that…The most widely accepted opinion has it that…”

Gods, she had been a pain in the neck. He rubbed his nape unconsciously, not realising that he was smiling at the memory until he recalled that he now was in a very different situation with Miss Hermione Granger.

“Where did they come from, these Death Eaters?”

“A castle. By the sea.”

Right. That rules out Yorkshire – no wizarding castles by the sea, there. Scotland? So close to Hogwarts?
He noticed that Hermione was gettingitivitively red in the face, and he was trying to avoid looking at her breasts again. He would have to push on as fast as he could.

“Who was at the castle? Can you see anyone you know?”

She hesitated for a moment on this question, but then shartearted giving a fairly comprehensive list of Death Eaters: Lestrange, MacNair, the Malfoys – surprise, surprise –, Rookwood, ers,ers, Nott, and so on and so forth.

“Can you see anybody you wouldn’t expect there?”

And then Snape suddenly was certain that Hermione had swallowed something – but what? – which had gone down the wrong way and now she was choking on it. The flush of arousal which had previously covered her face and neck was now turning into something darker, and more sinister. Hermione put her hands to her neck, making a terrible gagging noise, unable to breathe, and started up from the armchair.

Snape grabbed her by the shoulders. “Miss Granger! You will tell me who was there who shouldn’t have been – now!”

Hermione’s face was now definitely purple. Still he shook her roughly. “Hermione! Tell me. Who was it?”

Hermione opened and closed her mouth several times, trying desperately to breathe, like a fish asphyxiating out of the water. He slammed her back into the armchair, pinning her down to the armrests, and looked straight into her eyes. “Who?”

An awful, strangled sound seemed to come out of her innards and die at her mouth. And then she only pronounced one word, like him, before fainting.

“You.”