Lendoren

Everything you recognise belongs to Jo Rowling

thanks to Tanit for betaing this chapter

ch.8 the DADA lesson

That night, Hermione slept deeply. Her subconscious took her again to their clearing. She was comfortably lying and felt a warm presence behind her as well as an arm draped around her waist. She tensed but at once a voice murmured to her ear:

“Don’t tell me you don’t like tenderness?”

“Yes, but…”

“So just enjoy, I won’t go further tonight. Well, what did you think of your first day at school?”

Hermione took her time to answer:

“Snape is strange this year. I don’t know how it ended but it was the first time I saw him threaten Malfoy with a detention.”

“And the rest of the day?”

Clearly, her subconscious didn’t want to broach the subject of the Potions professor. She skated over her Transfiguration, ancient Runes and History of Magic classes. When she finished, she felt the arm around her tighten its hold before the voice murmured:

“Get up, sleepyhead, breakfast’s waiting for you.”

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Her clock woke her up but Hermione was beginning to worry. Her subconscious was just beginning to be a good excuse. She felt too many things at night, as if they were real. What if she was manipulated by Voldemort without her knowledge? She blanched at the idea. After all, Harry had also been manipulated by dreams in his fifth year, and Ginny by a diary. She ought to speak to someone about it if it occurred again.

When Severus came to the Great Hall for breakfast, he was sporting an indifferent face but was inwardly relieved when he spotted an already sitting Arlin. Hermione was worrying, even Potter and the two Weasleys seemed to have noticed it.

« Arlin, » he asked abruptly.

“Something wrong, Severus?”

“Hermione begins to understand it isn’t her subconscious that takes over her dreams. You do as you like, but she needs to understand what it is no later than today. If I do the same to her than I did this morning, she’ll begin to speak to her friends and I want to wait for a little more.”

“You know Potter at least has to know, and not in too long a time…”

“It isn’t that urgent, I think we can at least wait until the Autumn equinox, as I told you. She’s getting stronger but my shields can still hold on until then. Afterwards…we’ll se,” he sighed. “It will depend on her.”

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Harry, Hermione and Ron were the first to enter the Defense against the Dark Arts classroom. Last year professor had been an Auror who hadn’t wished to teach for more than a year. They had however begun to study the non-verbal spells with the basic spells they were supposed to know for the NEWTs. He didn’t have Lupin’s talent for teaching but it was a nice change after Umbridge for they had acquired a lot of practice. They were curious to see how this new teacher would tackle the subject. They were rather silent whent they entered, Professor Gryffin was at his desk and motioned them to sit down.

He said, smiling, « Today, we’ll do without our wands, but only today. Next lesson, I’ll give detention without warning to those who would come without their wand for I can’t imagine Defence against the Dark Arts without it for wizards such as you.”

The students smiled, relieved, a wandless Defence against the Dark Arts lesson indeed reminded them of some bad memories of the toad Umbridge. He also gave them tips about the way he would manage the class, probably as tightly as Lupin or McGonagall but without Snape’s disagreeable manners.

« This lesson will be to know each other. First I ask you to fill those questionnaires. No notation about it, just list the spells you think may be asked for your NEWTs exams, and I want to know which ones you think you can cast non-verbally or vocally, which one you’ve heard but don’t know how to cast them. Let’s be clear: I expect frank answers from you, even if the outcome is more homework to catch up with the syllabus. You’ve got twenty minutes.”

Harry, Ron and Hermione, as well as the DA’s members, mastered more than half of the spells and had heard of the others. Twenty minutes later, their parchments flew to their teacher’s desk.

“Well, I’ll study your answers before next lesson, in the meanwhile, I’ll talk a bit about me. Oh, no, I’m not a Lockhard,” he said seeing the darkening faces. “Who had heard about the Lendoren?”

A full silence met the question. Eyes turned to Hermione but even her was displaying an unknowing pout. She never heard of them before.

« I’m not surprised, and that community isn’t mentioned in any book of the Hogwarts library, nor in any other library you may have access to. The Lendoren, whose I belong to, are a community. We are full wizards, we can master the same spells as you with a noticeable difference: we cannot perform any Dark Magic, without exception. On the other hand, we can access another Magic we’re the only one with the power to master, which is being practiced without a wand and which is the foundation of the exceptional wards which protect the castle.”

Every student was gaping at him, you could have heard a pin drop.

« Indeed, Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin et Helga Hufflepuff were all Lendoren. Thus they had drawn in their Lendoren Magic to forge the castle’s defences. Only the Lendoren have the ability to reinforce them if they were weakened.”

He let them assimilate that information before he got to the most important part of his lecture from his point of view and the reason why he had told those young witches and wizards about his nature.

“How to know who’s a Lendoren? First, one becomes a Lendoren only when coming of age at seventeen. Young men receive their Lendoren inheritance in its entirety on their seventeenth birthday. It doesn’t matter if their parents are Lendoren or not, usually, they’re not. Besides, it’s rather seldom that the children of a Lendoren couple are Lendoren themselves. The seer of the community, however, very well knows which young man has joined us so we can instruct him. About the young women, more often it’s their companion who takes charge of their instruction. It takes them around nine months to take possession of their inheritance, during that time their companion help them. The Lendoren couples don’t choose each other like you’ve got the chance to do, young people. The male companion remains single, at least in name,” he said smiling while some girls, Hermione included, blushed, “until their companion reaches her seventeenth birthday. From that moment on, they become a couple in every meaning of the world, with all the love but also the desire it implies. That love and that desire are so intense that I don’t know a single Lendoren male, me included, who have regretted the Magic’s choice of his companion.”

He let the students express their astonishment aloud for a while, some were chuckling or making naughty comments. The words he would use now would be crucial. Hermione had to understand but not to be scared…

« A Lendoren couple, » he raised his voice a little to get the class silent, « has moreover a particular ability: they can communicate together through telepathy whatever the distance between the two, they can communicate through their dreams so that they don’t have to wait for the other to wake up to share information. It’s only needed for one of them to want to speak to the other and, without waking up their partner, he or she reaches the other through their telepathic link and they can discuss whatever catches their fancy."

Without showing it, he was scrutinizing Hermione’s face to try and know if she saw meaning in this. For now, only curiosity was seen on her face. He thought of what Severus told him about him hiding behind her subconscious at the beginning before he gradually lowered his guard while his love for her was growing, well, that was Arlin’s own conclusion. So he resumed:

“The male companion can more or less conceal that link to his companion. The young woman feels like she’s reliving her own memories, meaning dreaming. But as her Lendoren powers grow, the young woman becomes aware she doesn’t speak to her own conscience but to her companion’s conscience.”

Hermione was now fixing him, open-mouthed, and slightly scared. He didn’t need to explain further, things were up to Severus now.

Hermione was distracted during every lesson of the day, which most intrigued Ron and Harry. Sure, she was carrying out her work as easily as usual, even the difficult Professor Flitwick’s revelation spell she was the only one to cast properly, and on her first try, but she seemed mind-absented.

The reality was she was inwardly trembling. It couldn’t be, and yet it was so much like what she was living. But someone ought to tell her, no? She hadn’t met anyone, however…

She was so lost in her thoughts she didn’t notice Dumbledore’s, McGonagall’s, Professor’s Gryffin and Professor’s Snape’s eyes on her for a great part of dinner.

I'll never say it enough but thanks to those who have read and/or reviewed the story so far, especially citten, firewall, emma and meganconsoer. Don't worry, more is to come