A Room With a View

Roger That!

"Ready?"

"Yes."

"Alright. Deep breath, focus on my eyes."

He braced himself for the onslaught of Hermione's memories. It had been almost four years since he'd spent a significant amount of time in anyone else's head, and Hermione's thoughts were particularly disorienting. She had active internal conversations on at least six different research ideas, lustful thoughts of him and her together, concerns for specific students, her parents, her friends, and banal details of her life. He smirked inwardly as he noted that she had more thoughts than anticipated focused on oral hygiene.

He allowed himself to drift in the sea of her mind as he became acclimated to the threads of memory that were drifting past. He could see that she was focusing on their year together; images of him were passing him with increasing frequency. Severus took a deep breath to center his mind, slowly dropping his own shields to allow her thoughts to filter through his mind. He felt her love for him almost as a tangible thing as he watched absorbed image after image of himself: saving in the morning, reading to her while they sipped tea on his sofa, making love on his sagging mattress. She remembered it all with startling clarity. He allowed himself to be swept away into her memories...

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"Well?"

"Hmm?" Severus was staring at a point just beyond her without really seeing anything.

"Did you find any of the answers that you need?"

"It helped fill in some blanks, yes."

They were silent for a moment.

"And?"

He shifted his eyes toward hers. "And?"

"Well, what can you tell me?" she huffed with some exasperation.

He smiled, then leaned in to place a chaste kiss on her lips. "I can tell you that you have one of the most stunningly beautiful minds that I've ever had the privilege to explore."

Hermione colored a bit, glancing away for a moment. "Thank you, but you know that's not what I meant."

"I know. Come here." He scooted back into the corner of the couch and brought her with him, settling her into his side and running his hand down a length of her curls. "I used a technique that I've employed a few times during interrogations; I sort of drifted through your memories, rather than focusing in on anything specific. Learning by osmosis, you might say. It'll take awhile to process it all, I think."

He felt her deflate slightly in his arms. "Oh." She sounded terribly disappointed. 

Severus sighed. "I know that you wanted some answers, but the mind is a tricky thing - as well you know. However, I have your memories in my consciousness now. I think that, when combined with whatever my attacker did to me at the Malfoy's ball, I might start to recover memories more quickly. At least, that's what I hope."

"Oh, Severus. That's what I hope too."

She reached up to her shoulder to twine her fingers with his and they both sat in silence, watching the fire.

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Days passed as days tend to do, and Severus found himself more contemplative than normal. Much as he'd hoped, Hermione's memories served as a springboard for his own and his consciousness worked to stitch together recollections of events that merged her memories of events with his.

This was both a huge step forward and a very confusing experience. On one hand, having access to parts of his year with Hermione was wonderful after spending months in the dark. She had fed him memories of both the mundane and the sublime, from making sandwiches in the sadly dilapidated kitchen at Spinner's End to making love in the garden while planting a vegetable patch after Easter. He found himself dwelling on the memories he'd seen at inopportune times, often shaking himself out of his reveries in the middle of shielding practices or dark creature identification labs. Luckily his students, who were gratifyingly absorbed in the course materials, failed to notice his inattention.