Interrogation
The silence in the room was shattered by Hermione's mom, who cheerfully announced that she would prepare a delicious dinner for everyone. Atlas, being the polite guest he was, offered his help in the kitchen. However, he was swiftly reassured that, as a guest, he was exempt from any kitchen duties. Hermione, on the other hand, seemed to have been drafted into service, albeit somewhat reluctantly. With Hermione whisked away to assist her mom, Atlas found himself left alone with Hermione's father.
Seizing the opportunity, Hermione's father took the initiative to strike up a conversation with Atlas. It felt like an unexpected interrogation as Mr. Granger delved into every aspect of Atlas's life, inquiring about his past and even his aspirations for the future. The conversation carried a certain level of stress for Atlas, who was keen on leaving a positive impression on Mr. Granger while simultaneously navigating the complexities of explaining the magical world and crafting a few white lies about his future plans. Atlas understood that Mr. Granger wanted to ensure his daughter's well-being and wanted reassurance that he had sincere feelings towards Hermione. Yet, it felt as though Mr. Granger was searching for a reason not to like him. Atlas couldn't determine if it was simply because Mr. Granger struggled with his daughter having a boyfriend or if there was something more personal at play. Nevertheless, Atlas made a conscious effort to remain calm, composed, and likable throughout the conversation, investing himself in the task of winning Mr. Granger's approval.
Atlas was sure that at least he didn't leave a bad impression, but he wasn't sure if he really left a good one. But after the dinner, he was sure that at least Hermione's mother liked him. She was always stopping her husband when he wanted to bore into topics that normally no kid his age should even concern himself with. Hermione had a bit of an apologetic expression at her father's behavior, but Atlas didn't really take it to heart.
Hermione's mother then suggested that if they were to have a sleepover, they should make it a memorable occasion by watching a movie together and indulging in freshly made popcorn. She even kindly offered to accompany them to the media library to borrow a movie or two, and her husband would assist in setting up the television in Hermione's room. Atlas found this to be a delightful alternative to their usual dates, recognizing that the wizarding world lacked the sophistication of Muggle entertainment.
---
Hermione and Atlas savored the simple pleasure of watching a movie together, snuggled cozily on Hermione's bed. Hermione insisted they take photographs in their pyjamas to immortalize the moment in their photo album. She also couldn't resist capturing an endearing snapshot of Atlas buried amidst her numerous plush animals. They even had some kind of pillow fight because Hermione wanted to have one.
Meanwhile, Mr. Granger thoughtfully prepared a mattress for Atlas, half-heartedly mentioning something about a guestroom, only to be promptly silenced by a discreet pinch from Mrs. Granger.
---
Atlas reclined on the comfortable mattress while Hermione nestled beside him on her bed. They exchanged light conversation, reflecting on the pleasant day they had shared and even discussing Hermione's father's overprotective nature. It was in these kinds of moments that Atlas realized that Hermione's life before Hogwarts was probably quite lonely. As the tranquility of the night settled around them, Atlas anticipated they would finally drift off to sleep. However, Hermione broached another topic, one that clearly weighed heavily on her mind.
"You know, I've been thinking about what you told me in the Room of Requirement last week. About You-Know-Who's potential return and everything. You mentioned that Dumbledore would likely handle everything, yet we continue to train rigorously because you believe it's necessary. I don't understand why you're so certain about You-Know-Who's comeback, but if it does happen, wouldn't it be wiser for Harry to train alongside us? I mean, he defeated him once when he was at the peak of his power." Hermione pondered, her thoughts consuming her.
Atlas found himself taken aback by Hermione's question, which required careful consideration before responding. He already had a plan in motion to eliminate the hero, and he wasn't entirely convinced that bolstering Harry's strength would be to his advantage. However, after reflecting upon it, he realized that in the grand scheme of things, Harry's involvement wouldn't make a significant difference and might even serve as a backup plan in case his own mission failed, leading Quirrell to reveal himself as Voldemort and decided a killing spree was a nice way to announce his return.
The only dilema was that he suspected that the hero would become even more suspicious of him than he should already be, particularly if the hero happened to be Amy, Leona, or Ethan. He was in no delusion that the hero wouldn't suspect him to be a hero too, even if he wouldn't know about his mission. Starting to train Harry in the Room of Requirements so soon before the canonical fight against Quirrell would happen would basically scream that he was a hero. After thinking about it even further, he realized that getting together with Hermione was probably on a similar level, and that he should eventually prepare for a frontal fight with the hero in case his plan failed.
With a sigh, Atlas responded to Hermione, his voice tinged with resignation. "You're probably right. Just give me a few days to confirm a few things at Hogwarts, and then we can invite Harry to join our training. However, I can't guarantee that he will keep it a secret from Ron or Neville."
Hermione swiftly replied, her determination evident in her voice. "I'm not so petty that I would jeopardize the entire wizarding world just because Ron is an idiot."
The discussion ended there and Atlas fell asleep thinking that maybe Hermione would be able to understand and forgive him in case he really were to succeed in saving her from the destruction of the universe.
To his dismay, his nightmares wanted to tell him the opposite and he woke up shortly after.
While staring into the dark, wanting to forget the face of hate on Hermione's face he had seen in his dream, he listened to the rhythmical and steady breathing of Hermione. Compared to Ron's snoring, it was like music to his ears, and he could surprisingly fall asleep again pretty soon.
---
The next day, after breakfast with Hermione's family, they played around in the snow while taking a few more photos. They even added a photo to the medallion that he gifted Hermione for Christmas. And before lunchtime, his parents popped up in front of Hermione's house.
They invited the Grangers to stay for dinner when they would bring Hermione to them the next week before giving Atlas the opportunity to say goodbye to Hermione and then leaving.
For some reason, the few leisurely days had helped Atlas recover from the mental strain he didn't know he had. But the last few days were enough for him, and he knew he should invest any spare time he had into improving himself, refining his plan, or learning what he could for the next universe. So when he had to wait for Hermione to visit him and his family, he spent his time studying. His priority would have been the topic regarding souls, but even at home or in Diagon Alley, he didn't find any good books regarding the topic, so he instead invested more time in studying the fundamentals of magic and read the book from Professor Ward's class again. He was interested in researching the paper regarding the magicgen that gave wizards the ability to produce magicpower, but the paper or a book regarding the topic seemed to be unavailable in any store he asked. The looks the clerks gave him indicated there was a story to it, but Atlas couldn't care less about some pure-blood families that probably wanted to silence the research, so he would have to ask Professor Ward for the research paper. He considered studying muggle science after failing to get a deeper understanding of magic from the books, but this world seemed quite backward compared to his old one, and it would probably be better to study science in a more advanced universe. He had also read his book regarding bowtruckles, but after receiving another letter that some researchers asked to meet him to study his form and understand bowtruckles better, he thought that maybe they could increase his understanding of his form even more than the book did and answer a few open questions the book had.
So with nothing else to do, he decided to invest more time into practicing his Occlumency. While he was quite proficient in the art by now and could basically hold his mental barriers up at any wake moment, this kind of training failed to advance the art beyond the normal barrier variant. In hindsight, he realized that the hero's boon had probably immensively helped him advance his occlumency to the level he was at. But now he wanted to attempt the third step of occlumency and build a layered barrier system with multiple fake thoughts and memories in between to confuse any intruder.
The first thing he noted was that this level had three different types of memories that one needed to differentiate. The first type were your true memories and your true thoughts, which you wanted to protect. They would be, just like in the second step, behind the last barrier. The second type, which was the most difficult to maintain, were the fake thoughts one wanted the invader to see if they attempted to read his mind. The major difficulty was that the fake thoughts needed to change the same way real thoughts would and weren't static like memories were, so they required an exceeding amount of focus and control. Snape was considered a master occlumency practitioner because he was able to maintain these fake thoughts at all times without impairing his actual thinking. The last type were fake memories or unimportant memories that one would encapsulate in weak barriers. Once encapsulated, the memories could not be changed any more until the barrier was broken, so if one needed to imagine a complete fake memory with all kinds of senses to create something believable instead of something that would just resemble a real memory. For that reason, most people simply used unimportant memories, as it was much easier. The encapsulated memories also had the advantage that if one broke the barrier, the memory would be refreshed. So it was the ideal tool for studying and remembering things, even though one would need to reinvest the effort to encapsulate those memories if one wanted to save them again.
Atlas initial experiments were bad to say the least. He wanted to use the technique to encapsulate memories to help himself remember and save things, but more often than not only encapsulated memory pieces instead of the whole memory. So for example when he wanted to encapsulate a memory of his last dinner he would have a memory bubble that would help him remember the taste of cheese instead of the whole dinner. While he could create more bubbles, it would require greater mental effort to maintain them and the difficulty for subsequent bubbles would also increase so he wanted to increase his proficiency more instead of creating thirty bubbles just so he could remember his dinner in his entirety.
Learning to save his memories was more important to him than protecting his memories, as he knew that as long as he had even a small barrier up, he would stop Snape and Dumbledore from reading his thoughts, and while that wasn't the case for Quirrell, he was sure that Quirrell would only attempt it if he could get away with it or if he was willing to reveal himself. And if he had the opportunity and the intention to search his mind, he didn't believe for a second that he would be able to build a barrier that would block the Dark Lord, who would, in the worst case, use the cuciatus curse to torture him and break him.
The day before Hermione should visit, he was at the level where he could encapsulate the memory of his dinner in four bubbles, but he was still visibly improving with each day, and would soon be able to try the technique on more complex memories.
After contemplating Occlumency and, inevitably, Snape as he taught Harry and was famous for the art, Atlas finally decided to approach his mother about her letter to Snape. Finding her in the basement brewing potions, he eagerly volunteered to assist her, as he often did before departing for Hogwarts. As they worked side by side, the topic of Snape naturally arose, given his remarkable progress in the subject.
"Mom, do you really know Snape? I mean, truly know how he is as a person and as a teacher?" Atlas inquired, recalling his mother's high expectations regarding Snape's teaching abilities.
Nodding casually, his mother replied, "Of course, I know him. He was one year ahead of me at Hogwarts, and we occasionally studied together. To be honest, he was quite cute back then. My best friend had quite the crush on him, although he only had eyes for a Gryffindor girl."
Atlas was slightly taken aback by the revelation that his mother's best friend had been infatuated with Snape. He was momentarily tempted to delve deeper into the matter but realized that conveying his own concerns to his mother held greater importance than indulging in gossip about Snape.
"So, what was it like studying with him? Could he explain problems effectively? Was he nice?" Atlas inquired, his tone already suggesting his unfavorable opinion of Snape. To his surprise, his mother burst into laughter.
"Hahaha! Snape and nice? He was anything but that. He constantly made us feel inadequate and claimed that a troll could brew potions better than us. No, Snape was far from nice. However, if you could overlook his bad moods and cutting remarks, he did teach us remarkably well. Honestly, I probably learned more from him than from Slughorn, the potion teacher at the time. Snape was an absolute genius when it came to potions. He had created or refined more potion formulas during his school days than most people who make a living from potions do in their entire lives. And he was willing to share all that knowledge without hesitation. Admittedly, he wouldn't spoon-feed you with answers to every minor issue, but he always pinpointed the root of your problem and guided you to discover the solution yourself. So, in a way, he was a better teacher than most who would simply give their students all the answers the moment they struggled," explained his mother.
Atlas felt a surge of frustration. He had expected his mother to be unaware of Snape's true malevolence, yet she knew and still sent him that ill-fated letter. Unable to contain his dissatisfaction, he whined, "But why? Why did you send him that letter? He's making everything so much harder for me. I spend more time on potion homework than all my other subjects combined!"
With a mischievous grin, his mother countered, "And have you become a better potion brewer because of it? Where is the young boy who couldn't get enough, who would sneak into my workshop just to read one more book or wished for his own potion workstation for Christmas to become the greatest potion master in the world?"
Atlas clenched his teeth, realizing that the lies he had told as a child to encourage his parents to teach him more and earlier were now coming back to haunt him. "Mom, I was six at that time."
"That's what we told you at the time, but do you remember your response?" his mother prompted.
Atlas strained his memory, and as the recollection resurfaced, he felt an overwhelming desire to smack his head against a wall.
"If I recall correctly, You said something like: 'I might be six, but I will become the greatest potion brewer and wizard who ever lived, and you're trying to hold me back,'" his mother mimicked his childish voice.
At that moment, Atlas knew he had lost the argument. "Fine. Can you at least tell me what happened between Snape and your best friend? Was it Amelia Bones?"
"No, Amelia came a few years after us at Hogwarts. My friend at that time was Marlene McKinnon," his mother replied somberly.
"Marlene? Why was she never here to visit?" Atlas inquired, his curiosity piqued, hoping to extract some Snape-related gossip after conceding defeat on the other topic.
Shaking her head, his mother answered, "No, Marlene fought against You-Know-Who alongside Dumbledore and his little Order. Her entire family was wiped out shortly afterward. After that tragedy, I withdrew from the wizarding world and eventually met your father."
"I'm sorry, Mom. I... I didn't know," Atlas said, realizing that he had unintentionally caused his mother to recall the loss of a dear friend. It was the first time he had witnessed her vulnerable side. Usually, she exuded constant happiness and rarely displayed a hint of melancholy.
"Don't worry, sweetheart. I'm fine. Besides, I visited Marlene's grave just two months ago, and believe it or not, your evil menace of a potion teacher was there too, after I invited him in the same letter I where I asked him to teach you," his mother revealed, attempting to infuse her voice with happiness but failing to mask the underlying sadness.
Atlas was taken aback by the revelation, unaware that Snape's emotions could extended beyond his feelings for Lily and his animosity towards James and Sirius.
---
The following day, Hermione paid Atlas a visit, and as expected, they eagerly planned another delightful sleepover. Her parents were thrilled at the prospect of experiencing the abode of a genuine wizarding family, albeit somewhat disappointed when the house appeared rather ordinary at first glance, aside from the basement and a few enchanting moving pictures, including a talking portrait of Atlas' grandparents. However, this didn't mean that they were deprived of witnessing some magic. Atlas' mother put on a captivating display while preparing a meal, and they even set up a camera to capture precious moments of their gathering around the table.
---
On the subsequent day, just before Hermione was to be escorted back by her parents, Atlas felt it imperative to impart some basic occlumency instructions to her. With a tinge of envy, he realized that she possessed a natural talent for it, easily grasping the fundamental concepts. He consoled himself by attributing her progress to having an actual teacher while he had started with an imperfect book. Yet, the truth remained that Hermione simply had a gift for it. Of course, this didn't imply that she could master occlumency within a day or two, but she comprehended the essentials and effortlessly reached the necessary state of mind for practicing. Atlas was certain that she would be capable of erecting a stable mental barrier within a few weeks.
Convincing Hermione that it was necessary to learn occlumency was fairly easy. Explaining to her why he knew a bit legilimency on the other hand, was not so easy.
Author Note:
Sry for the late release, i had to write the chapter in one go as i didn't have time yesterday and i released a bonuschapter so i didn't have any backlog.
I hope you enjoyed the Chapter.
I had to cut a few things short but i think its better that way. We will focus on his animagus form at a different time, because i don't want to write the same things twice and I think i can write more about it at a different time.