Carl had to work to find his voice, he was so deep in the trance, "Yes, Ron."
Clearly, Ron must have given Westfield permission to call him by his given name, for as far as Harry could recall, Westfield had always called Ron "Mr. Weasley."
"Very good. Very good, indeed. Now, there's something very important that I need you to remember. What we're going to see is just a picture. It can't hurt you. I want you to pull as far back from the images as you can. You'll see things, but they have no ability to touch or move you. They'll be like shadows on a wall, without substance. Just show Harry what you did today, all right?"
"All right," the boy echoed.
"Begin now. You're leaving the Hufflepuff dorm, on your way down to breakfast this morning…."
Harry instantly found himself popped into the same kind of memory Snape had shared with him earlier. Only, due to his instructions at the beginning of the hypnotherapy, Carl was even further detached emotionally than Snape had been, and that was saying something.
Harry watched Carl joke and laugh with his two best friends as they barrelled down the hall for a fast breakfast before their big day at Hogsmeade. Joe Mangra was a dark skinned boy of Indian descent, while Don Smithers was a blue eyed, chubby brunet who put Harry in mind of Neville in his school days. All three boys were among Harry's favourite students.
Amused, Harry watched a fast forward as the three stuffed themselves to capacity in the Great Hall, pulled on their jumpers, and raced with the rest of the student body for Hogwarts' main doors. The boys were tossing an exploding jelly treat back and forth among each other, with no one watching where they were going as they hurried out of the hall.
Carl gave an 'Omfff,' as he literally ploughed into a towering black obstacle.
Although Westfield was sedated and deep in a hypnotic trance, the sight of Severus Snape's long-nosed, glaring face was enough to make the boy start to tremble.
Carl, Harry mindspoke to his student.Step back a little further. I want you to go down a few more of those stairs that Ron was talking about and distance yourself from this. These are only empty images. Shadows on the wall. They can't hurt you. Remember, I'm right here with you. Slow this part down and let me see what he says.
Westfield gave the mental equivalent of a nod. As his emotional response to Snape receded, Carl's anxiety lessened as he practiced the mental technique Harry had suggested.
The frozen memory began to play out again as Carl regained his focus. Harry found himself back in the corridor outside the Great Hall, his perspective of Snape tilting madly as the unbalanced Westfied listed to the right in an imminent fall.
With an irritated scowl, Snape reached out his wounded right hand to steady the boy as Westfield staggered, and then the Potions master pulled his hand back to smooth down his own wrinkled robes.
"I'm s-sorry, Professor S-Snape, s-sir," Westfield stammered the way any student who'd just barrelled into the cantankerous potion master would.
"Going to Hogsmeade, are you, Mr. Westfield?" Snape asked in that condescending, cultured voice of his. Harry was privately startled that Snape didn't threaten to revoke the boy's Hogsmeade visit to punish him for the accident. But Westfield was a Hufflepuff. It only seemed to be Gryffindors who evoked that degree of spite in Snape.
"Y-yes, sir," Westfield replied.
"Don't forget you've got a three o'clock detention or your friends can join you for the next two weeks after class. Is that understood?" Snape demanded.
"Yes, sir. I'll be there. Three o'clock," Carl promised.
"Be sure that you're on time," Snape snapped and then strode off down the hall with his long robes flapping behind him like raven's wings.
"God, he just makes my skin crawl," Smithers said.
"He's such an ugly git," Mangra added. "Tough luck about the detention, Carl. What'd you do to earn it?"
"You know I got thrown from my broom at quidditch practice on Thursday? I didn't get released from infirmary until Friday morning and never got a chance to do Thursday's homework," Westfield explained to his friend as they left the castle and stepped out into a brilliant October morning. The air was still warm as summer, but the tree leaves around the grounds were beginning to turn from green to red and gold.
Harry felt himself getting as mad at Snape as Westfield's companions did. Ten years had passed and the man was still a petty tyrant.
'That bloody bastard!'' Mangra spat.
"That's so unfair! Did he take any house points?" Smithers asked.
Westfield gave a glum nod. "Five."
"The bastard," Westfield's companions chorused with the same exact unison the Weasley twins used to have, setting the trio to giggling.
The subsequent conversation as the three fell into line with the dozens of other students streaming down the road to Hogsmeade was what might be expected. Harry gave Carl a mental nudge to fast-forward them through the irrelevant incidents of the trip.
The morning and early afternoon passed as any of the dozens Harry had spent on Hogsmeade Saturdays had: Carl and his friends visited Honeydukes, ate enough candy to keep them bouncing off the walls until the next Hogsmeade weekend in three weeks, then a quick trip to Zonko's Joke Shop. They made the prerequisite stop at the Shrieking Shack to determine who was the bravest. Carl went the closest, but even that wasn't as close as Ron was willing to get prior to their learning the shack's secret.
When his friends turned back towards the Three Broomsticks for a butterbeer, Carl bid them farewell and began his solitary trek back towards Hogwarts.
The day was still fine and bright, the road dry underfoot. Carl's memory sped over the trip back, glossing over the woody stretches that smelt like pine, moist ferns, fallen leaves, and acorns. Carl did the same for the farm fields that lay between the Hogsmeade woods and the Forbidden Forest. As the memories skimmed over farmhouse after farmhouse, Harry, who was still monitoring his student closely, noticed that Carl's entire body tensed as they sped past an abandoned farmstead on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. The breath actually seemed to catch in the boy's chest as they passed the abandoned red barn with its caved-in roof and boards missing from its covered shuttered windows, but then Carl's memory rushed to the portion of the road that crossed through the Forbidden Forest, where Carl nearly ran the last mile.
What happened back there? Harry mindspoke as the long, covered bridge that crossed the northern section of the lake and connected the Hogsmeade Road to Hogwarts main gates came into sight. The wind hit their face, rich with the scent of water and damp soil.
Back where? Carl asked, speeding the memory across the bridge.
That deserted farmhouse seemed to upset you,Harry pointed out.
He felt Carl tense. I don't know what it was. It usually doesn't bother me. I guess it was being alone on the road and seeing the ruins on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Should we continue?
Yes, Harry said, then advised, let's step back from things some more, all right?
Carl used the mental technique Ron had taught him to further buffer himself from his emotions. Feeling almost sedated in the resulting calm, Harry silently urged the boy forward.
Carl passed through the gates of Hogwarts and down the dungeon stairs to the Potions lab, making his detention with time to spare.
Just as in Snape's recollection, the Potions master was at his desk grading papers as the boy entered. Harry stared around the room, trying to absorb the small details as Snape had suggested, but he could see nothing out of place in the Potions lab. It looked exactly the same as it had in Snape's memories.
"I'm here, Professor Snape, sir," Westfield stammered.
"The stinkweed is there on your workbench, Mr. Westfield. Kindly chop it all up into even pieces two inches in length," Snape said, giving a wave of his scratched right hand in the general direction of a students' worktable with a huge pile of green weeds on it.
So far, both versions of the detention were identical.
Carl crossed to his bench and began to chop up the smelly green weeds as directed.
Harry gave Carl a gentle nudge to move them through the chopping a little faster. When Westfield had been at his work for perhaps fifteen minutes, he saw Snape rise from his desk out of the corner of his eye. Since it wasn't unusual for Snape to go about his own business while he had students serving detention, Carl didn't pay very much attention to his teacher's movement.
It was only as a strong hand settled on his shoulder that Carl started. Snape's approach had been totally silent. The unexpected touch nearly made the boy jump out of his skin.
"Stand up and let me see how you're doing," Snape ordered.
Carl jumped to his feet to comply, knocking some of the weed to the floor in his nervousness.
Harry felt Carl brace himself for a caustic comment on his clumsiness, but Snape was atypically silent as he stepped directly behind his student to peer over the boy's shoulder at the chopped stinkweed on the table. Snape was so close that Carl could feel his body heat all the way down his back.
Uncomfortable at the violation of his personal space, Carl gulped and waited for his teacher to finish.
"You're chopping it too large," Snape said in a hoarse voice. "Pick up the knife and I'll show you how you should cut it."
Carl picked up the knife. To his horror, Snape's hand settled on top of his own, directing the knife's fall. Carl stared down at that long-fingered, yellow-stained hand gripping his own. Snape had never touched him before. Just seeing that hand covering his made Carl's stomach clench up, the way it would if he saw something squiggling on his dinner plate when he was halfway through his meal.
"Let me see you do it on your own," Snape instructed.
Carl froze as the man behind him stepped in even closer. Snape was pressing against his back now. His professor leaned in a little further over his shoulder to peer at his progress, and moist, hot breath hit the skin on his neck and ear.
Uncomfortable, Carl stepped forward, but the workbench pressed right into his front, and Snape moved along right behind him.
"You're shivering, Mr. Westfield, trembling like a nervous virgin. Are you?" Snape's voice was a silky whisper down his neck that only increased Carl's helpless shuddering.
Carl gulped. "Am I what, sir?"
"Nervous?" Snape whispered, an abrupt thrust of his hips made his groin bump hard against Carl's bottom.
Carl barely had the chance to gasp before Snape questioned with his trademark, condescending sneer, "A virgin?"
Inside the boy's mind, Harry searched for something, anything, to show that this wasn't Severus Snape doing this, but whoever had created this false memory had done his homework. The Snape was flawless. His voice, his appearance, even his carriage were all classic Snape –menacing and repulsive as only this man could be.
Carl was so shocked to feel his teacher's hard erection pressing through his robes and trousers against his backside that he was temporarily rendered speechless, which was never a good thing in Snape's presence.
The fake Snape capitalized on the boy's weakness the same way the real one would have done in an adversarial situation.
In fact, watching what was transpiring, Harry was beginning to wonder if maybe he had been wrong, that Snape had molested the boy and somehow hidden it from him, but . . . no, he'd felt both Snape's innocence and the man's anger at being wrongly accused. Whatever this memory was, it wasn't real. He just had to find a way to debunk it, but, stars, it was becoming increasingly difficult to focus while viewing what Westfield believed had happened at detention today.
Snape took the knife from the boy and flicked it aside. Then that yellow stained hand slowly moved to cup the front of Westfield's trousers.
Carl yelped as that hot palm gave a knowing squeeze. His entire body was thrown into confusion by the burst of resulting, raw pleasure that rocked through him. And the fear. No one had ever touched him there before. It felt amazing, but . . . .
But it was Professor Snape and it wasn't right that his nasty teacher should be touching him. He knew it wasn't right. His mother had said . . . but it felt so . . . .
Carl, pull back some more, Harry instructed and quickly helped his hypnotized student further distance himself from the scene. He wished he could do the same for himself, but he had to stay lucid and in the moment to suss out the flaws in this false memory.
Harry was undergoing his own crisis as Snape continued to touch Westfield through his clothes. He was here to prove Snape hadn't done this, but he couldn't see anything in the scene to discredit its reality in Carl's eyes. Harry knew Snape hadn't assaulted Westfield because he had touched the man's mind and seen for himself what had actually occurred, but if he hadn't . . . he'd have believed this image in a minute. It was that perfect, that well-crafted. Whoever had created this illusion had done his homework.
Harry's insides clenched in disgust as Snape stepped back far enough to slip the boy's robes from his shoulders.
Deprived of the support of that repulsive presence behind him, Carl staggered forward, almost falling onto the workbench. He caught himself with his hands before his face could hit the cold slate surface and was about to push back up when Snape's hands passed before his field of vision again, moving down towards the front of his trousers.
As if frozen by a Medusa spell, Carl stared in revulsion as those yellow-fingered hands manipulated the top button on his pants and took hold of his zipper. That vampire-like hand carefully lowered the zipper, the 'dzjurrr' of sound blaring through the silent dungeon loud as a shriek.
It was as Harry watched in impotent horror as Snape pushed Carl's pants down that something struck him as wrong. Really wrong. Only, he didn't know what it was, beyond the utter wrongness of what Snape was doing to their student. Yet, something was off.
Uncaring hands tugged Carl's trousers and underpants down to his knees. Though distanced from the event now in his hypnotic trance, the Carl in the scene was sobbing and begging, "No, please, don't . . . ."
