Gentle Rain

Chapter 6 - Training

Hermione was really interested in challenges, as she also loved to solve puzzles and find the right answer to a difficult question, but most of all, she loved it when she could invent something totally new. Something she had never thought of before.

"Harry, I know you think I've gone mad, but I'm not, nor has Professor Snape put me under Imperius, and no, I'm not Luna Lovegood with Polyjuice potion spiced with my hair undercover!" Hermione tried to convince Harry, who listened in great disbelief.

"So, you want me to teach you some Defence Against Dark Arts, so that you can make fool of yourself, again, so that you can go on pawing Severus Snape, again, and will not feel horrible afterwards, again, because you have learnt how to control your own energies while in his presence. Am I right?" Harry made his face look very long with every time he uttered again in a ridiculous kind of whining way, and continued, "This is worse than anything I have ever read or seen in Fred's 'Wicked Playwizard' magazine. Pure sadomasochism, or no, not pure, it's dirty. Dirty, distorted and perverted. Do you hear me, perverted!" Harry rolled his eyes dramatically.

"I knew you wouldn't understand, but it doesn't matter, please help me anyway," she pleaded. "I would like to have some kind of training, so that I won't be so sensitive and vulnerable to his antagonism. Teach me to be so prepared, that no matter how much and outrageously he'll taunt me, I will not lose my power or lose control of my own feelings. I don't want him to be able to make me feel bad, and most of all, make me cry."

Harry quietly listened to her request, and started to gradually figure out what she was aiming for.

"Harry, you are the Master of the Defence Against the Dark Arts, and what else is Professor Snape than a big piece of Dark Art?"

Harry was tempted to say something totally different than art, after words piece of... but he managed to keep his mouth shut and let her continue.

"If anybody is be able to understand and know what to do with him, its you. He's horrible, we both agree on that one, so I would like you to help me to be tougher and to defend myself. I really need your help, and this plan of mine does make sense, just think about it!"

"What you need is a few weeks in St. Mungo's, so that they can get you back down to earth... Okay, I was just kidding," Harry hastened to add, when he saw an angry sort of desperation crawling onto his friend's face. "Okay, I don't know what you did, or how you did it, but it seems that I have lost my mind as well. Meet me in my classroom tomorrow at six o'clock. Then we'll see what we can do."

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Harry had been giving DADA lessons to Hermione for over a week, and she had made some very good progress. Hermione had always defended herself verbally, and she was good at it too, but she had never been very good at controlling her emotions. Especially emotions such as hurt and offence. She was lying in her bed watching the shadows that a candle threw on her walls. Madam Pomfrey had informed her just a few hours before supper that Professor Snape had begun to receive the cramps again. It might have meant that there was a certain visit she had to make tomorrow. She repeated over and over again everything Harry had told her. She hadn't been this nervous before her final exams; back when she was still a student. She felt like she was going to do an important test, but she hadn't been able to read everything about it. Harry hadn't even allowed her to take any notes, he had said that Defence Against Dark Arts was something where books and papers didn't help, you had to know everything by heart, you had to really feel everything, feel the strength, feel the confidence growing inside you... In fact, Harry had said that you could wipe your ass with notes, but Hermione tried to forget it. What an offending thing to say.

"The biggest secret in Defence Against Dark Arts is that you must learn to love what you fear. It's also the one thing Voldemort didn't know; the more frightening something is, the more love you need to conquer it. It may sound sissy, but it was the main reason Voldemort fell. Love what you fear, it should be tattooed into your heart," Hermione recalled him saying. "If you learn to be yourself, and nothing but yourself, without even a slightest bit of shame, it makes a radiating shield over you that evil things can't penetrate, but instead bounce off and go back to it's source." Pulling in these thoughts she fell asleep and dreamt that she was a large golden ball, and Snape was bouncing her against the wall with his head.