"Hogwarts uses Waffling's Theory of Magic. Waffling is an exclusively European trained wizard. While he has a knack for explaining the drawing up of magic using a wand in an extremely easy way, he also subscribes to the belief that wandless magic is only possible for the most powerful of witches and wizards.
Not all witches and wizards agree. Inarra Serra, my teacher, silenced me with a mere wave of the hand. Power wise she was less powerful than all the individual teachers we've had so far. But she had trained her focus, concentration and will to the point anything she could do with a wand she could do with a wave of her hand. And believe me, I've read way more theory than just Wafffling. I'm still trying to get my focus to the point I can do wandless.
"Now I promised you Slytherins a basic locking charm. The incantation is obfirmo and the motion with your wand is just a twist like turning a key. Remember how it felt when you pushed your magic into your wand for the lumos it's the same principle for the locking charm. Try it."
Harry watched them closely, he had to correct Blaise's overenthusiastic twist and Millicent had to be brought back through a meditation to get her magic to the surface but by dinner all of them were successful.
After dinner Harry headed down to the dungeons and Snape, he really wasn't looking forward to this but hopefully he and the professor could clear the air between them and next week's lesson would be better.
"So, Potter. I'm glad to see you know how to be prompt. No magic, clean that stack of cauldrons then we will discuss your conduct."
Harry looked at the cauldrons some weren't bad. Since the students were supposed to clean up after themselves, the cauldrons were the result of students carbonizing their potions or sheer laziness, and were clearly one of Professor Snape's preferred tasks for punishment. The twenty cauldrons were probably the worst of the lot. Harry just removed his robes so he was in his jeans and t-shirt .
Sheba who had come with him curled up on a nearby counter and watched through half slitted eyes while Harry searched the cupboards for the proper cleaning supplies and dragon-hide gloves. Harry set briskly to work, Having carbonized a couple of potions while Walter was teaching him Harry knew the tricks. A couple of the cauldrons Harry put over flames to make the mess harden to the point of crumbling while he scrubbed the rest with lots of solvent and a wire brush. An hour and a half later he put the last ones he had cooked more into the scrub water. He used his forearm to wipe the sweat he'd worked up off.
When Harry finished the last cauldron he cleaned up the work area and put things back where he found them. He then approached Professor Snape. "Professor, I finished. I feel as if we got off on the wrong foot. I-"
"DO you really think I care at all about you, Potter?" He snarled with contempt. The Professors obsidian gaze locked with Harry's own emerald.
The contempt was easy to see, but then Harry felt one of the tripwires in his outer mental defenses go off. Harry got pissed, well there was more than one way to skin a cat. Harry deliberately led the Professor deeper into his projective mind scape to the defense Harry called the oubliette. There was very little Harry had taken from his work on the dark tower to use for himself; knowledge of runes, information about Hogwarts.
But Tom's mastery of mind magics had been formidable and the oubliette had been the least dark but most impressive of the mental defenses Tom had created from Harry's perspective. Harry would have an agreement with Snape on his terms or Snape wouldn't leave because Harry had the home court advantage. Harry now had more than a few questions for the 'good' Professor. His detention was likely to run late despite his finishing his task early. Harry wouldn't be leaving until he got those answers. Thankfully the oubliette seemed to speed up time for the trapped.
Harry waited for fifteen minutes before going to the observation area of the oubliette.
Snape was scared he had no idea where he was. He had been strolling towards Potter's inner mind seeing things like parties with his friends, flying on a broom, innocuous memories with little depth or value proving to him just how shallow the boy undoubtably was. When out of nowhere he found himself in a room shaped as an octahedron. It just big enough for one person to pace three steps in any direction.
There was enough light that he didn't worry about blindness but there was nothing,just the walls and himself. At first this didn't bother Snape, as a superb occlumens his mind was disciplined enough to occupy itself, or so he thought. He had no way of knowing how long he was there but it seemed as if he had been there for days and days and he couldn't draw upon his own memories to dispel the boredom.
He couldn't hold a train of thought long enough to even recite the most basic first year, as time passed he forgot everything. He held it together for a while but eventually fear and boredom and not knowing got to him and he felt himself begin to cry. Suddenly he was no longer alone. A boy on the verge of manhood appeared beside him.
"Hello, how did you get here? He asked the boy.
"This is my home, how did you get here?"
"I don't remember."
"Would you like to?"
"Yes, please."
"Then touch this wall with me."
Harry guided Snape's metaphorical hand to the connection that would allow him complete access to the Professor's mind. It was unethical in one sense. But had the Professor not entered Harry's mind it wouldn't have been possible: therefore, it was the Professor's own unethical behavior that made it possible. Harry could live with his own guilt in this instance. The walls around them displayed Snapes memories and also his feelings about those memories. Harry sped through most of them, slowing for the ones that showed his mother as a child. Snape never seemed to notice the slow down as he seemed to enjoy the memories of Lily as much as Harry did. Harry developed a certain amount of sympathy for the professor as his child hood had sucked. When they reached Snape's Hogwarts years Harry again slowed the memories. Harry felt ashamed as he observed how his father and his godfather treated the young Severus, he knew with out a doubt that had he been around he would have doled out a few lessons to remind the marauders of the value of compassion. The falling out with Lily, the terrifying experience when Sirius sent him out to Moony, the disbelief when his worst rival saved him and the soul crushing disbelief when Dumbledore failed to punish the Gryffindor boys and instead blackmailed the young Slytherin into keeping Moony's secret. Then came Snape's making a deal with the devil as it were. Harry watched those memories dispassionately while Snape himself was reliving the gambit of emotions connected to the memories. Then came the prophecy, Snape's joy in giving it to Voldemort. Then his fear and despair when Bellatrix Le Strange named the Longbottoms and the Potters as expecting children at the time predicted. Snape's groveling plea to Dumbledore. Snape's pleas to Voldemort to spare his childhood friend and "love". Voldemort's response to Severus. It was only Harry's own occlumency and past experience in dealing with distasteful memories that kept him from getting sick as they passed through Snape's morass of feelings of anger, lust, love, possessiveness, revenge and disappointment. When in the end his pleas to Voldemort to spare Lily proved to be insufficient to save her, his guilt at having been the one to carry the partial prophecy to Voldemort. Dumbledore's blackmailing a grief stricken Severus into protecting Harry at any cost garnering an unbreakable vow to protect Harry until Harry was ready to fulfill the prophecy. Finally the last memories the ones that showed Harry's arrival at Hogwarts and the events of the last week. As the memories came to a close Snape pulled his hand from the wall and looked at the boy beside him with a mix of fear and loathing.
"Where are we?"