Possession

Chapter Three: Waking ghosts

by Claire

"If there's nothing else, Miss Granger, I think you should go," Snape said as Hermione handed him the book of Melinda's poems.

Hermione was more than a little annoyed. He was treating her like some gossiping third year student, not like an adult making a professional inquiry. "Professor--don't you want to know if anything did happen between them? She's your great-grandmother, after all, and it would certainly change the face of Clemens scholarship. She might be the one he wrote Deeply about."

"Melinda Whiteface married a Snape and they had by all accounts a happy marriage which produced my grandfather, Julian Snape. That is all I want to know, and I am sure that is all there is to know. Good night, Miss Granger." She sputtered as he led her firmly by the arm to his door.

"It's in his handwriting, and it's addressed to her," Hermione insisted from the doorway.

"All it is is the draft of a letter you do not even know he sent."

"Are you sure she never wrote anything to him?"

"I have read all her published letters. I have read some of her letters before they were even published, in fact, and I am sure that she never corresponded with Marcus Clemens. Now do I have to banish you or will you leave on your own?" Snape said.

Hermione sighed at her former Potions Master. "Goodbye, Professor. I will owl you if I find anything."

"I'm sure you will."

***

Hermione started from the beginning. She had been a bit embarrassed that she knew so little about Melinda Whiteface, so the next day after she lectured, she returned to the university library and took a stack of books into one of the private study rooms: a collection of Whiteface's poetry, the only Whiteface biography on the shelf, and all the published letters.

She started with the biography. Well, Snape had been right about one thing. Melinda Whiteface had married Horatio Snape practically right out of Hogwarts, in 1918. Judging by the letters they wrote to each other and their friends' journals and letters, Horatio and Melinda were very much in love. Melinda had a son, Julian, in 1921. She published a lot of poetry, her greatest achievement being Drowned World, from the time she was a sixth year student at Hogwarts till the time she died in 1942, shortly after Horatio and Julian were killed in a scuffle that had to do with some supposed followers of Grindelwald. And that was it. Nothing at all was mentioned about Marcus Clemens.

Hermione checked the index of the published letters, and Clemens' name was not mentioned there either. Still, she felt very sure. She had never read anything Clemens wrote that seemed as earnest, as hopeful, or as pleading as that letter she had found. Surely he had sent Melinda the final copy, and surely Melinda answered it. Just because no letters are published, Hermione thought, doesn't mean they didn't correspond. Maybe they didn't want anyone to know they corresponded, so they destroyed the letters. Or hid them.

"Damn it," she said under her breath. She had hoped that she could enlist one of the Whiteface scholars at the university to help her figure out what had happened between them, but if the letters existed and they weren't destroyed, then they were probably still sitting in a box somewhere in one of the poets' ancestral homes. She knew for a fact that they weren't in Belfast where Clemens' descendants lived, because they had had the family estate and summer home searched, as well as the house where Clemens stayed while he was studying to be a Potions Master, when he died over twenty years ago. Everything was sold for thousands of pounds.

If the letters are in Snape Manor ...

Hermione knew the facts of Marcus Clemens' life nearly as well as she knew the facts of her own. Poetry was not his only profession, he was briefly a Potions Master at Hogwarts before he left to brew new concoctions and write poetry in solitude. He actually went to Hogwarts to teach in the fall of 1912. Hermione did some quick calculating in her head. According to her biography, Whiteface began Hogwarts in 1907. Clemens would have been her professor for two years before she left school! So they did know each other, she could at least prove that to Snape.

***

Dear Professor Snape,

I am writing to inform you that Marcus Clemens and Melinda Whiteface did in fact meet one another. Marcus Clemens taught Potions at Hogwarts during Melinda's sixth and seventh years, so they would have known each other well. In light of the letter I have found, it is quite possible that they corresponded after Melinda left Hogwarts.

I hate to disturb you yet again, but a relationship between the two poets, particularly a romantic relationship, would be very important to my work and must be investigated. If I were to unearth it, it would make an excellent topic for my dissertation, but you do understand that if you do not work with me to discover any connection between them, I will have to inform the head of my department and the Whiteface scholars at my university so that it can be pursued along more formal channels. Do let me know which option is most convenient for you.

Sincerely,
Hermione Granger

Snape crumpled the letter, stalked over to his fireplace, and threw it in. Granger had certainly thought that through before she sent it. His choice boiled down to spending a day ransacking the nooks and crannies of Snape Manor with one annoying know-it-all, or putting up with a whole flock of know-it-alls from her university asking questions and insisting that he find and sell some probably nonexistent family belongings. He snarled as he wrote Granger a response.