Mental Connection Quiz
Hermione and Severus are each powerful in their own right. What happens when they share a mental connection? Does it make them stronger or threaten to drive them crazy? Join us and find out!
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EDT. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
For Someone Special by ladyofthemasque
In Dreams by machshefa
Bewitching Her Mind by notsosaintly
In Your Dreams by Duj
Heart With No Companion by Michmak
Hidden Truths by MetaMuse
A Cuckoo in the Nest or The Baby Dialogues by melusin_79
For the Potion Master’s Amusement by snape_submiss
Graduation by My Little Secret
Ripped & Torn by irenacandy
The Amber Effect by wandlimb
How it Happened Doesn’t Matter by Delsea
1. Unstoppable, his mind repeated, and he realised from the look on her face that Hermione had heard, using that low-grade telepathy they had shared after what they did.
She thrust out her arms, and suddenly the whole courtyard, the whole school was bathed in light. The dead were beyond help, but the living rose, wounds healing, wands drawn.
Harry's movements became faster, more reflexive. And he began to win.
He now considers it a matter of interest that the power left both he and Hermione at that moment. He believes that the power had done what it was called to do - the restoration of balance and light - and balance would not be served by any of them possessing great power in the long term.
For whatever reason, the power did leave them, but it was there for long enough. Harry won. They won. There were no further losses on the Order's side. At the end of it, Voldemort was no more than a pitiful ragdoll, felled by his own rebounding magic, crumpled on the ground like trash at their feet. And when he was felled, when the last lights of his Dark magic faded away, she simply turned to him and put her arms around him, and they marked each other with soot and tears and with blood calling to blood.
2. Curled in front of the blazing fire, exhausted from the physical, magical and emotional ritual that they had instinctively enacted, the figures projecting from the Adfinitas Animarum seemed to be plucked from a dream.
Lifting the hand that was not languidly stroking Hermione’s curls, Severus muttered, “Accio,” and the book slid towards them.
“What do you think it means?” she murmured, barely able to keep her eyes open.
Turning the book in his hand, Severus considered the shimmering images projected from its pages. “I think,” he said slowly, “that these are our instructions.”
“Instructions?” Hermione’s head shot up, eyes darting between Severus and the floating icons. “What sort of instructions?”
“I believe,” Severus repeated, voice tight, “that these are the instructions for finding my body and reanimating it with my soul.”
Heart racing, Hermione reached for the book, nodding sombrely as Severus handed it to her. The images hanging innocently over the pages of the Adfinitas Animarum were each tethered to the book with a coloured beam of light. Reaching out tentatively, Hermione prodded the map with a finger and startled when it became solid in her hand. With a glance at Severus, she opened it and laid it out for them both to see.
3. He pressed a hand down hard on the heavy bulge that had plagued him all day. Every time he thought of her, it was the same. He was worse than the hormone-crazed teenage boys that flooded his classroom every day. He had to do something about this obsession before he lost his mind.
“Oh, yes. I almost forgot, I am losing my mind,” he muttered to himself.
After Hermione’s little show that morning, he had realized what had been happening. He had noticed that she seemed a little tired and distant these last couple of weeks, and now he knew why. Her dreams were keeping her awake-just like his had been. Moreover, he knew exactly what those dreams had been because he had been having them too. He just hadn’t realized they had been affecting her until Dream-Hermione had walked into his classroom today.
4. He is... dead, I take it?’
‘Voldemort?’ Hermione felt the baby shudder. ‘Oh, yes,’ she replied. ‘Didn’t you know? But of course, I don’t suppose you would, would you? Would you like me to fill you in on the details?’
‘That would be most kind of you,’ Severus replied. ‘I’ve no idea what’s been happening while I’ve been... er, gone. One minute I was hurtling down a tunnel towards a bright light, and the next I was being told I had to come back. How did Potter manage to finish him off?’
‘Let me see... After we... After we left the Shrieking Shack...’ With a shaky voice, Hermione began to recount the tale of the Battle of Hogwarts to her unborn son. He listened quietly - until she got to the part where Neville had decapitated Nagini...
‘Merlin’s balls!’ he exclaimed. ‘I never would have thought that Longbottom had it in him. Seemed I misjudged the boy.’
‘Yes,’ Hermione agreed. ‘You always were rather harsh on him, as I remember.’ She grinned. ‘Actually, er... we were thinking of making him your godfather.’
5. The smile the nurse gave her was a placating one, the sugary sort of patient, placating smile she would probably give Lockhart if he offered the woman one of his signed photographs. “Don’t you worry about going anywhere, young lady; you’re under the influence of a powerful but subtle piece of magic that we haven’t quite placed yet, and until we’ve figured out what it is, I’m afraid we cannot let you out and about in the world. Why, you might collapse again!”
“I collapsed because Severus Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts, was a colossal idiot and tried to commit suicide! ” Hermione snapped, uncaring anymore if anyone learned of their affair.
She hadn’t imagined his voice in her head. Somehow, they were still connected telepathically; that was why Hermione had nearly been expelled during the N.E.W.T. session. It was the only thing that made sense…even as it didn’t make sense. That was how she’d known what was wrong with him; she couldn’t reach out to him now, couldn’t sense his mind with her own-probably only the threat to his life had allowed even that brief moment of contact, earlier-but Hermione knew she was still bound to him, somehow. Unfortunately, she was stuck in the loony-ward of St. Mungo’s, without any decent clothes, suffering a nurse who had clearly spent too long in the loony-ward to know when a patient was perfectly sane. And still feeling disconcertingly weak and dizzy.
“There, there; obviously you’re under a lot of stress at the moment, imagining that someone else’s troubles have any bearing upon your own…”
6. So we do the ‘amo animus’ and after that bond usually a week passes before linking between you and your love takes place. By linking I mean you telepathic with one another.”
“And this was the last surprise right?”
“Yes, when did you do the ceremony?”
“This morning after opening presents,” Hermione blushed.
“This morning? How deep was the connection?” Candace asked.
“Unanimis.” Hermione answered.
“Interesting. While your mother and I are soul mates we didn’t receive that.” Reed commented.
“I think I missing something here,” Hermione stated.
“Hermione, I thought you knew this?” Severus asked.
“I researched it in the library and asked Dumbledore to help me with it.”
“Albus didn’t give you the book he had on it?” Severus pondered.
7. "Snape? I thought he was dead."
"He's mostly dead," she replied, remembered the line from a movie her parents had rented several years past.
"You mean he's here? In your MIND?"
She nodded.
Ron dropped his arms and frowned at her. "Well, tell the bastard to get the hell out!"
"I did! He won't go. He said he doesn't have any other place to go."
Ron ran a hand through his hair, leaving spikes standing up in all directions.
"He looks like a drunken grindylow in a ginger wig, " Snape commented.
"Shut up!" Hermione thought firmly.
"So, what do we do now?" Ron asked. "Look for an exorcist?"
8. Narrowed eyes scorned her reasoning.
“Except they won’t know that’s why you want to marry me and you won’t be able to explain. Not to anyone. The dream-link alone proves my true loyalties; that’s reason enough for the other side to kill me.” He huffed out a long breath. “Do you honestly think your parents would let you marry one of your teachers? We’re supposed to protect you, not prey on you!”
“Between the three of us, I’m sure we can think up an excuse.”
“An excuse!” He shook his head. “Do you think it so easy simultaneously to satisfy your parents, the Dark Lord, the Ministry, the Board of Governors, the entire parent and student body, the Daily Prophet and all its readers - not to mention the Order and your best friends? They watched you ask to speak to me privately, and they’ll want to know why.”
She sat up straighter. This she was ready for.
“I prepared an alibi. I’m going to let them think I wanted to discuss improvements to the formula for Polyjuice. I even creased my book to open to the right page.”
He gave her a pitying look from under raised brows.
9. While those three months had not exactly flown by, they had certainly passed more quickly than Hermione thought they would. After the overpowering rush of those first few interludes with Snape, her real life had come back into focus. Between Head Girl duties and studying for her N.E.W.T.s, her days returned to a more familiar pattern.
Her nights, however, belonged to Severus.
He had taken to calling to her late in the evenings, when she was preparing for bed. Sometimes he would pull her into his mind to share a fantasy. At other times, he would simply speak to her, telling her in warm, dark tones what he wanted her to do to him, and - more frequently - what he wanted to do to her. At first she had simply listened, biting back an occasional moan as his monologues enticed her. One night, though, he made it clear that listening was not enough.
10. Snape grimaced. “You won’t like it, but I see no other way.” At her steely stare, he continued. “First, I will instruct you in Occlumency. With your single-mindedness in learning a new skill, you should master the basics rather quickly.”
“Was that a compliment?”
He raised an eyebrow. “An observation, Miss Granger, made over the course of seven years.”
“Occlumency, then. To use against Riddle?”
“You will never be within a land league of that maniac, if I have any power over the situation. No, Hermione. The Occlumency is to be used upon me.”
“You...?” Then her expression clouded. “To block our connection. But I don’t want to block…”
“I said you weren’t going to like it.”
She slid from his lap and stalked away, her back to him. “On the other hand, you’ll like it just fine.”
Snape felt the hurt rolling off her. He had known what her reaction would be. “It’s the only way.”
“I thought you said there would be time in our schedule for us, but you don’t want…”
“Hermione, listen to me.”
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EDT. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
For Someone Special by ladyofthemasque
In Dreams by machshefa
Bewitching Her Mind by notsosaintly
In Your Dreams by Duj
Heart With No Companion by Michmak
Hidden Truths by MetaMuse
A Cuckoo in the Nest or The Baby Dialogues by melusin_79
For the Potion Master’s Amusement by snape_submiss
Graduation by My Little Secret
Ripped & Torn by irenacandy
The Amber Effect by wandlimb
How it Happened Doesn’t Matter by Delsea
1. Unstoppable, his mind repeated, and he realised from the look on her face that Hermione had heard, using that low-grade telepathy they had shared after what they did.
She thrust out her arms, and suddenly the whole courtyard, the whole school was bathed in light. The dead were beyond help, but the living rose, wounds healing, wands drawn.
Harry's movements became faster, more reflexive. And he began to win.
He now considers it a matter of interest that the power left both he and Hermione at that moment. He believes that the power had done what it was called to do - the restoration of balance and light - and balance would not be served by any of them possessing great power in the long term.
For whatever reason, the power did leave them, but it was there for long enough. Harry won. They won. There were no further losses on the Order's side. At the end of it, Voldemort was no more than a pitiful ragdoll, felled by his own rebounding magic, crumpled on the ground like trash at their feet. And when he was felled, when the last lights of his Dark magic faded away, she simply turned to him and put her arms around him, and they marked each other with soot and tears and with blood calling to blood.
2. Curled in front of the blazing fire, exhausted from the physical, magical and emotional ritual that they had instinctively enacted, the figures projecting from the Adfinitas Animarum seemed to be plucked from a dream.
Lifting the hand that was not languidly stroking Hermione’s curls, Severus muttered, “Accio,” and the book slid towards them.
“What do you think it means?” she murmured, barely able to keep her eyes open.
Turning the book in his hand, Severus considered the shimmering images projected from its pages. “I think,” he said slowly, “that these are our instructions.”
“Instructions?” Hermione’s head shot up, eyes darting between Severus and the floating icons. “What sort of instructions?”
“I believe,” Severus repeated, voice tight, “that these are the instructions for finding my body and reanimating it with my soul.”
Heart racing, Hermione reached for the book, nodding sombrely as Severus handed it to her. The images hanging innocently over the pages of the Adfinitas Animarum were each tethered to the book with a coloured beam of light. Reaching out tentatively, Hermione prodded the map with a finger and startled when it became solid in her hand. With a glance at Severus, she opened it and laid it out for them both to see.
3. He pressed a hand down hard on the heavy bulge that had plagued him all day. Every time he thought of her, it was the same. He was worse than the hormone-crazed teenage boys that flooded his classroom every day. He had to do something about this obsession before he lost his mind.
“Oh, yes. I almost forgot, I am losing my mind,” he muttered to himself.
After Hermione’s little show that morning, he had realized what had been happening. He had noticed that she seemed a little tired and distant these last couple of weeks, and now he knew why. Her dreams were keeping her awake-just like his had been. Moreover, he knew exactly what those dreams had been because he had been having them too. He just hadn’t realized they had been affecting her until Dream-Hermione had walked into his classroom today.
4. He is... dead, I take it?’
‘Voldemort?’ Hermione felt the baby shudder. ‘Oh, yes,’ she replied. ‘Didn’t you know? But of course, I don’t suppose you would, would you? Would you like me to fill you in on the details?’
‘That would be most kind of you,’ Severus replied. ‘I’ve no idea what’s been happening while I’ve been... er, gone. One minute I was hurtling down a tunnel towards a bright light, and the next I was being told I had to come back. How did Potter manage to finish him off?’
‘Let me see... After we... After we left the Shrieking Shack...’ With a shaky voice, Hermione began to recount the tale of the Battle of Hogwarts to her unborn son. He listened quietly - until she got to the part where Neville had decapitated Nagini...
‘Merlin’s balls!’ he exclaimed. ‘I never would have thought that Longbottom had it in him. Seemed I misjudged the boy.’
‘Yes,’ Hermione agreed. ‘You always were rather harsh on him, as I remember.’ She grinned. ‘Actually, er... we were thinking of making him your godfather.’
5. The smile the nurse gave her was a placating one, the sugary sort of patient, placating smile she would probably give Lockhart if he offered the woman one of his signed photographs. “Don’t you worry about going anywhere, young lady; you’re under the influence of a powerful but subtle piece of magic that we haven’t quite placed yet, and until we’ve figured out what it is, I’m afraid we cannot let you out and about in the world. Why, you might collapse again!”
“I collapsed because Severus Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts, was a colossal idiot and tried to commit suicide! ” Hermione snapped, uncaring anymore if anyone learned of their affair.
She hadn’t imagined his voice in her head. Somehow, they were still connected telepathically; that was why Hermione had nearly been expelled during the N.E.W.T. session. It was the only thing that made sense…even as it didn’t make sense. That was how she’d known what was wrong with him; she couldn’t reach out to him now, couldn’t sense his mind with her own-probably only the threat to his life had allowed even that brief moment of contact, earlier-but Hermione knew she was still bound to him, somehow. Unfortunately, she was stuck in the loony-ward of St. Mungo’s, without any decent clothes, suffering a nurse who had clearly spent too long in the loony-ward to know when a patient was perfectly sane. And still feeling disconcertingly weak and dizzy.
“There, there; obviously you’re under a lot of stress at the moment, imagining that someone else’s troubles have any bearing upon your own…”
6. So we do the ‘amo animus’ and after that bond usually a week passes before linking between you and your love takes place. By linking I mean you telepathic with one another.”
“And this was the last surprise right?”
“Yes, when did you do the ceremony?”
“This morning after opening presents,” Hermione blushed.
“This morning? How deep was the connection?” Candace asked.
“Unanimis.” Hermione answered.
“Interesting. While your mother and I are soul mates we didn’t receive that.” Reed commented.
“I think I missing something here,” Hermione stated.
“Hermione, I thought you knew this?” Severus asked.
“I researched it in the library and asked Dumbledore to help me with it.”
“Albus didn’t give you the book he had on it?” Severus pondered.
7. "Snape? I thought he was dead."
"He's mostly dead," she replied, remembered the line from a movie her parents had rented several years past.
"You mean he's here? In your MIND?"
She nodded.
Ron dropped his arms and frowned at her. "Well, tell the bastard to get the hell out!"
"I did! He won't go. He said he doesn't have any other place to go."
Ron ran a hand through his hair, leaving spikes standing up in all directions.
"He looks like a drunken grindylow in a ginger wig, " Snape commented.
"Shut up!" Hermione thought firmly.
"So, what do we do now?" Ron asked. "Look for an exorcist?"
8. Narrowed eyes scorned her reasoning.
“Except they won’t know that’s why you want to marry me and you won’t be able to explain. Not to anyone. The dream-link alone proves my true loyalties; that’s reason enough for the other side to kill me.” He huffed out a long breath. “Do you honestly think your parents would let you marry one of your teachers? We’re supposed to protect you, not prey on you!”
“Between the three of us, I’m sure we can think up an excuse.”
“An excuse!” He shook his head. “Do you think it so easy simultaneously to satisfy your parents, the Dark Lord, the Ministry, the Board of Governors, the entire parent and student body, the Daily Prophet and all its readers - not to mention the Order and your best friends? They watched you ask to speak to me privately, and they’ll want to know why.”
She sat up straighter. This she was ready for.
“I prepared an alibi. I’m going to let them think I wanted to discuss improvements to the formula for Polyjuice. I even creased my book to open to the right page.”
He gave her a pitying look from under raised brows.
9. While those three months had not exactly flown by, they had certainly passed more quickly than Hermione thought they would. After the overpowering rush of those first few interludes with Snape, her real life had come back into focus. Between Head Girl duties and studying for her N.E.W.T.s, her days returned to a more familiar pattern.
Her nights, however, belonged to Severus.
He had taken to calling to her late in the evenings, when she was preparing for bed. Sometimes he would pull her into his mind to share a fantasy. At other times, he would simply speak to her, telling her in warm, dark tones what he wanted her to do to him, and - more frequently - what he wanted to do to her. At first she had simply listened, biting back an occasional moan as his monologues enticed her. One night, though, he made it clear that listening was not enough.
10. Snape grimaced. “You won’t like it, but I see no other way.” At her steely stare, he continued. “First, I will instruct you in Occlumency. With your single-mindedness in learning a new skill, you should master the basics rather quickly.”
“Was that a compliment?”
He raised an eyebrow. “An observation, Miss Granger, made over the course of seven years.”
“Occlumency, then. To use against Riddle?”
“You will never be within a land league of that maniac, if I have any power over the situation. No, Hermione. The Occlumency is to be used upon me.”
“You...?” Then her expression clouded. “To block our connection. But I don’t want to block…”
“I said you weren’t going to like it.”
She slid from his lap and stalked away, her back to him. “On the other hand, you’ll like it just fine.”
Snape felt the hurt rolling off her. He had known what her reaction would be. “It’s the only way.”
“I thought you said there would be time in our schedule for us, but you don’t want…”
“Hermione, listen to me.”