Chapter 10

As the weeks passed, Imogen found she was able to work harder and more effectively as she gained experience. She resorted to the time-turner with increasing frequency, and her typical day was thirty hours long. She was beginning to truly believe that she would meet her self-imposed goal of catching up with her peers by the start of the second term.

She'd kept the list of curses given her by Professor Flitwick, and had learned a few of them. Anyone challenging her to a duel now might get a surprise. In her chosen subjects, she was now into fourth year work, and because the topics were more difficult, her rate of progress slowed somewhat. Her biggest difficulty was now in potions, despite the fact that Snape for the last two weeks had been allowed her to work at her own pace. After her display of multiple potion making, Snape had told her to drop by at his office the night before each class to let him know which potions she wished to work on the next day. And sure enough, at each Potions class she found all the ingredient she needed along with the necessary equipment. Snape had even moved her out of the far dark corner, for he was giving her rather more attention, and she supposed that he did not want to have to walk all the way to the other end of the classroom every time he checked on her work.

And it was not only in the classroom that she was getting attention from Snape. On those evenings before potions class when she went to see him as instructed, invariably he would talk with her. At first only short chats, then gradually longer. And always the penetrating gaze and then their eyes locking as Snape stole into her mind. It got so that she could feel him inside her, and she knew that if she were not careful, Snape would inevitably read in her things that she wished to keep hidden. Each time she was to see him, she spent an hour or so of her precious time, programming herself with thoughts about Professor Snape and Potions class, so that these thoughts would be uppermost in her mind when she went to see him.

By now Imogen had realized that there was a definite disadvantage to not having studied Herbology. It was the rare potion that did not use a magical plant of some kind. Madam Sprout was a thoroughly effective teacher, and the other students had all studied the characteristics of numerous plants. But of this subject Imogen was profoundly ignorant, and only a few days earlier, she'd gone wrong on a not-to-complicated fourth year potion. The instructions had called for the use of maple leaves, and for some inexplicable reason she was delighted to be using this ingredient Ironically, it was with the maple leaves that she'd gone wrong. Without thinking twice, she'd chopped up the entire leaf and put it in the mixture. She later learned from Snape that the instructions had not bothered to mention that one only used the right side of the leaf, for everyone knew that the sinister side of a tree leaf was unsuitable most potions. This kind of error, where she displayed ignorance of what was common knowledge of plants, had been coming up increasingly often, and it was maddening for Imogen. Yet she was so busy with Transfiguration and her other subjects that she felt she could not spare the time now to start catching up on Herbology as well. She hoped that when she achieved parity with the other fifth years in her chosen subjects, that perhaps she could start then on Herbology. But until then, her appalling ignorance of the subject would continue to bedevil her. For the couple of weeks, prior to every meeting with Snape she had been focusing on this particular problem as part of her mental preparation for the meeting, hoping that the solution she wanted would occur to Professor Snape.

Such were the thoughts on Imogen's mind as she made her way to Snape's office. She extended her hand to knock, but she heard Snape's invitation to come in before she'd rapped to indicate her presence. Perhaps Snape's frequent invasions of her mind was making it possible for him to detect her when nearby but not visible.

She stepped into the office, waiting as always until she was invited to sit. Snape was busy at a potions table, working on a complicated concoction of his own, and said he would be with her in a few minutes. She used the time to focus her mind on the qualities in her that she most wanted Snape to see. Her eyes looked about the room as she did so, and she noticed idly that Snape's office decorations had changed somewhat - a ghastly portrait was gone, replaced by a landscape. A small statuette of a mutilated man had also been taken away, a magical spinning ball now occupying the spot. She stared at the ball as she cleared her mind of unwanted thoughts. Before long Snape was able to leave his work, and seated himself across from her, and she told him what she wanted to work on - her first attempt at an antidote.

"Yes," he said, "I should think that's about right for you now. But it's a tricky one, and you'd do well to read the instructions over carefully tonight." With an idle wave of his wand, a set of instructions appeared on a piece of parchment. A quick glance was all Imogen needed to ascertain that the instructions he'd just given her were far more detailed than the meagre outline in the Potions text, and once again she was struck by the depth of the man's knowledge. At that moment she looked up at him, and the timing was fortunate, for immediately Snape's eyes were on hers, his mind effortlessly exploring her.

The potions master was gratified to ascertain that Imogen's dominant thought at the moment was Snape's superlative skill at potions, and his ability at imparting his knowledge. He detected that Imogen was quite certain that no one could teach the subject like he. He was even more delighted to pick up the girl's desperate wish that Umbridge would be banished from the school, and that Snape would be appointed in her place, for the girl was learning nothing about Defence against the Dark Arts, and she was sure that she could learn much from him.

After the first few times he'd trespassed on the girl's mind, Snape had abandoned his quest to explore areas no decent wizard deliberately would have investigated. He had quickly found that the girl's mind was unusually difficult to explore. It was not that the girls was practicing occlumency, for faced with that, he would not have even known there were barriers in place. This was different - there were sections of Imogen's mind which he believed were unknown even to her, and thus unknowable to him, at least for now. With other girls he had taken a salacious delight in learning secrets of dormitory life and other stepping stones in an adolescent's development, but with Imogen he would not be able to learn such things without extreme effort, and he found that when he contemplated going to extremes, he felt a sense of shame. And so this evening, like other evenings of late, he contented himself with scanning only the girl's thoughts about her academic development, her hopes, her problems, her fears.