Well, he'd touched Snape on some level; that was clear. Now all he had to do was make the mental connection. Harry opened his mind to the potion master's and reached out.
His probe slammed so hard into a solid metal wall that he actually grunted in surprise. He'd never encountered anything like it. The obstruction was as real as the flagstones under his feet. The gunmetal grey wall rose as tall as his mind could see and went on to the horizon in both directions, higher and longer than the Great Wall of China. Harry could see the bolts that had been pounded into the solid iron strips. It felt thicker than the Forbidden Forest to him.
"Are you all right, Harry?" Ron asked from a million miles away.
Harry stared at the wall he'd hit. No door, no windows, no weak point. It might be sheer illusion, but it was impenetrable.
"Sir," Harry said softly, "you have to let me in. I won't force my way through this."
Behind him, McGregor's voice was saying, "Force through what?"
Hermione reprimanded him in her teacher's voice, "Be quiet, the lot of you. Harry needs to concentrate."
The wall remained as solid as the castle around him.
"Please, sir?" Harry whispered.
The grey iron in front of him seemed to shimmer. After a moment, a narrow break appeared between two bolts. It widened until it was large enough for him to squeeze through – just barely.
Harry stared through the hole. It was pitch black on the other side.
As usual, Snape wasn't making anything easy for him.
Taking a deep breath, Harry pushed his shoulders and then the rest of his body through the barely sufficient break in the icy cold metal. It was fully as thick as he feared, seeming to be at least four feet deep on each side. It was an almost claustrophobic squeeze, and he had the horrible fear that the sides would snap closed when he was in the centre, crushing him like a fly. That would be just like Snape.
But the break stayed open, and Harry sidled through. When he was finally past the walls, he shuffled into total darkness.
There wasn't even a hint of light. Wherever he was, it was blacker than the Chamber of Secrets. But at least he was inside Snape's mind, even if the man were holding him in some nightmarish vestibule. They could communicate thought to thought now, without the need to share what they were saying with everyone else in the Headmistress' office.
I know this isn't what you think about all day, Professor, Harry thought at Snape. Any chance of getting some light in here?
He felt the other man's irritation as though it were his own, and then Snape's chagrin as he realized that he was reading his emotions. The feelings stopped as if Snape had thrown a switch. A heartbeat later, a blinding white light filled what looked like an empty white room. Well, he'd asked for light.
Harry blinked, feeling tears fill his stinging eyes as he tried to focus in the painful brightness.
A moment later, a bubbling black iron cauldron appeared on top of a small fire a few feet in front of him, and Harry felt/sensed Snape's resolve to watch that cauldron bubble for the rest of eternity, if need be.
We don't have the rest of eternity, Harry mentally corrected. If you don't help me prove your innocence, you're not even going to have the rest of the day! You're like me, sir. You have real horrors in your past. You know what the dementors will do to you. You won't survive the night in Azkaban, let alone until your trial. You have to trust me. You have to let me in.
The cauldron kept bubbling, but he heard a nearly ironic voice softly challenge, Trust you, Potter?
Suddenly, Harry knew that Snape was as perturbed as the potion bubbling in that cauldron. Although the illusion of the white room and the brewing cauldron remained firm around him, Harry felt the emotional wounds that a legion of unspecified betrayals had left in this bitter man. The only betrayal he saw clearly was Snape catching his fifteen year old self with his wand in that pensieve, but Harry wasn't certain if that were Snape's memory or his own.
Yes, trust, Harry insisted.
Why should I? You could damn me by confirming the charges and I wouldn't be able to muster a single defence, Snape sneered. The bubbles in the cauldron erupted more violently, as though the heat beneath the pot had been increased.
Snape was furious, and frightened, Harry recognized, surprised by that last. Snape was frightened as he'd never seen this formidable man afraid before, even when they were locked in a life or death battle with Voldemort and losing the fight.
I could have done that without coming in here, if that were my plan. If you don't believe me, read me for yourself, Harry offered, dropping his mental barriers completely to allow Snape to do his own probing.
But Snape didn't enter his mind. After a moment, the cauldron's bubbles calmed to their earlier steady stream. Harry seemed to hear a whisper from the popping bubbles. He is not his father, not his father . . . .
With that echo, Harry pieced the puzzle together. Snape had allowed the illusion to slip ever so slightly. Most people wouldn't have made the connection, but the instant he heard that cauldron whisper, he knew how Snape had created this illusion in a place where there should be only honesty. When he'd reached for Snape's thoughts, he should have entered directly into Snape's mind instead of this surreal holding cell. He'd been confused when he hadn't, but now he recognized that it was impossible for him to have arrived anywhere else other than his destination once Snape had opened the hole in his guards. Therefore, he had to have reached his destination, which meant . . . .
The cauldron was Snape's mind. Now that he knew the truth, Harry could sense that the bubbles were the thoughts and emotions he'd been sent to sift through. All he had to do was focus his will on that madly bubbling pot, and he'd have anything he wanted from Snape – if he were willing to rip through enough barriers to get to it.
No sooner had the whisper that was barely there died then the cauldron started to bubble furiously again as Snape no doubt recognized his error. With Harry in his brain like this he wouldn't be able to create another protective illusion to replace this one, for Harry would pick up on his intention to deceive. He needed only to throw the force of his will against that cauldron, and the entire white room and pot would dissolve around him. He could feel Snape bracing himself for him to do just that.
Harry considered it for all of two seconds. But forcing Snape's memories would make them adversaries. He wasn't here to do battle; he was here to help, even if the cantankerous misanthrope couldn't see that. So, rather than attacking the illusion, Harry sat down on the totally white floor that had neither hardness nor softness to it, but simply was, and watched the cauldron percolate.
I won't force you, sir. It's up to you. Like you said, it's me or the dementors.
The frenzied boiling in the pot gradually slowed to a steady simmer.
Harry could feel Snape all around him, watching him, evaluating. Finally, the white around him started to fade away. The cauldron flickered before his eyes. Between one breath and the next, the illusion vanished.
Instead of a sterile white room, Harry found himself rocked by a dizzying montage of colour, images, emotions, and information that formed the typical chaos of a human mind. After all of that calm whiteness, the din and shifting images were nearly too much. Harry couldn't focus on any one thing. Trying to grab hold of one of Snape's passing thoughts or feelings was akin to attempting to grasp something while being tossed about in the funnel of a tornado. Even so, below the reeling montage, Harry could hear one thought replaying over and over again like a Muggle recording. He is not his father, not his father . . . .
His heart twisted at that desperate mantra. More than a quarter of a century had passed since his dad had died, and Snape was still so scarred by whatever the hell had passed between them that his resemblance to his father was enough to utterly unsettle the man. He wanted to do something to reassure Snape that he was right, that he wasn't his dad, but Harry knew that would only rattle his colleague further. So, he waited silently while the anxiety raged around him.
When it showed no hint of abating, Harry sent a soft call of, Sir? out into the maelstrom.
Ever so slowly, the swirling storm stilled around him, telling Harry that he'd caught Snape's attention.
I need you to show me what happened at detention today. Can you do that?
Snape's snide voice seemed to boom through his entire being as he snarled, Nothing happened in detention today.
Show me, please? Harry requested.
Another prolonged pause followed in which Harry was tossed about in the rocky swirl of the mind around him. In that wild collage of confusion, Harry picked up one clear impression – for the briefest of instants, he experienced the shame and horror Snape was feeling at being accused of this heinous act. It was gone as fast as Harry fixed onto it.
As Snape concentrated on his request, the turmoil around him stilled. As soon as Snape focused on the memory, Harry was abruptly snapped into the Hogwarts' dungeon Potions' classroom. The perspective was Snape's from his desk, where he sat grading a stack of fifth year test papers. Harry stared at the ugly rip across the top of the hand holding the quill as Snape took ten points off a Gryffindor paper for a wrong answer that he'd detracted two points from the previous Slytherin paper for the identical mistake.
There was a sound at the door. Snape, and, perforce, Harry, watched out of the corner of his eye as the black-robed, blond Hufflepuff student reluctantly shuffled into the empty classroom.
"I'm here, Professor Snape," the boy stammered.
Harry felt Snape's irritation at the interruption. He looked up, met the boy's red-rimmed blue eyes and ordered, "The stinkweed is there on your workbench, Mr. Westfield. Kindly chop it all up into even pieces two inches in length," Snape said, waving his scratched right hand in the general direction of a desk with a huge pile of green weeds on it. Then Snape returned his, and, therefore Harry's, attention to a ludicrously inaccurate answer on the paper he was grading.
Harry could hear the rustle of the boy's robes in the quiet dungeon as Westfield took his seat, then, a minute or two later, the sound of steady chopping began.
Westfield had been crying before he came to detention? Harry asked of Snape's mind.
What? Snape responded, the image before them seeming to freeze in place as the Potions master focused on his question.
Look at his eyes, Harry suggested, calling Snape's attention to Westfield's eyes. Snape's mind rewound the image to the instant when he'd looked up as the boy entered the room, seeming to see Westfield's face for the first time. The boy's eyes were as red as Harry's were whenever he'd had the nightmares for three or four nights straight. Harry knew without needing to be told that the boy had cried his heart out recently. He felt Snape share that thought.
I hadn't noticed, Snape said.
What happened next? Harry asked.
Harry absorbed a fast-forward detailing of Westfield's detention, which was really an in-depth fifth year Potions review, since Snape never even looked at the student after Westfield had begun chopping his stinkweed.
It wasn't until a timid, "Professor, I'm done," interrupted his grading that Snape raised his eyes from the tests.
Snape, and, therefore, Harry's gaze, jumped to the worktable to take in the pile of neatly chopped weeds. Harry felt Snape's satisfaction with a job well done as though it were his own as the Potions master appraised his student's work.
There was no praise uttered, however. All Snape did was give a bored sounding, "Very well. You're dismissed. Be sure to get your homework in on schedule next time."
Harry didn't even get to see Westfield leave, for Snape's attention was so firmly focused on his papers as soon as he'd dismissed his student that he never even watched the boy exit the dungeon.
That's it? Harry asked of Snape's mind. He opened every sense he had, searching for subterfuge, for the mind strong enough to create that white room and cauldron illusion was a force to be reckoned with.
In its entirety, came Snape's reply.
Harry felt the body around him tense, but it wasn't with deceit. He had the briefest glimpse of his host's dread of having his mind plundered to verify the memory before those thoughts were closed to him.
But it wasn't thoughts Harry wanted to focus on. It was feelings, for, in his experience, emotions never lied. He focused on those fleeting sensations around him as intensely as he possibly could. There was no place Snape could have hidden, no chance of him lying.
All he could feel was Snape's fear that his memory wouldn't be believed: that there'd be more probing, more examining; that in the end, Potter would see that he'd told the truth, but condemn him out of spite, as Snape had found himself condemned every time he'd ever been vulnerable.
The emotions packed into that last bitter thought hit Harry as hard as Cruciatus, for that was the only comparison he had to the level of pain.
The man lived with that every day?
Harry took a deep breath and tried to shake the almost visceral reverberations that Snape's hurt called forth in his own heart. But it was hard to let go of it. He'd always considered Severus Snape a cold-blooded bastard with a penchant for cruelty and sarcasm. He'd had to learn to trust the Potions master as a brother-in-arms, but he'd never liked him. All he'd ever seen of Snape was his pettiness. He'd never considered what had engendered that mean-spiritedness. Harry realized now that he should have done. The Legilimency and Occlumency lessons Snape had given him had granted him some insight into Snape's unhappy childhood. He'd known that there was more to Snape than his acerbic tongue.
Unsure why he felt so guilty, Harry tried to figure out what his next move should be. His instinct was to reassure, to send comforting feelings flowing across their mental link to Snape. Only, he knew that Snape would not appreciate his empathy. Snape would just be even more incensed that Harry had read his weakness.
So, in the end, Harry focused on his own feelings, savouring his sense of triumph that his faith had been justified. There'd been no rape, no abuse. The detention Snape had shown him was all that had occurred in the Slytherin dungeons this afternoon – just as he'd known that was all there would be. Aside from the absence of baiting, Westfield's detention with Snape hadn't gone any differently from the scores of punishments Harry remembered serving with the man.
