Gilderoy found himself once again standing outside Severus Snape's office a few days later.
The dungeon corridor was as gloomy as ever, lit only by flickering torches whose light never seemed quite capable of reaching the darker corners of the stone walls. Most students avoided this part of the castle whenever possible, but Gilderoy simply raised a hand and knocked twice against the office door.
"Enter."
The familiar cold voice answered immediately.
Gilderoy stepped inside and shut the door behind him.
Snape was already seated behind his desk grading essays, his black eyes lifting briefly toward Gilderoy before returning to the parchment spread across the surface.
"You are late by three minutes."
"I was precisely on time."
"You were not."
"Then your clock is wrong."
"My clock is not wrong."
Gilderoy pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down.
"Good to see you too, Severus."
Snape's quill paused for the briefest fraction of a second.
"Five points from Ravenclaw."
"For what?"
"For being irritating."
Gilderoy blinked.
"Are you even allowed to take points? You're only an assistant professor."
Snape slowly looked up from the essay in front of him, his expression suggesting he had just been asked the stupidest question of the week.
"I am still a professor, dunderhead. Now stop arguing before I decide Ravenclaw can survive with ten fewer points."
"Fine, fine," Gilderoy surrendered, raising both hands. "No need to threaten innocent students."
"There are no innocent students here."
"That's a concerning thing for a professor to say."
"Fifteen points."
Gilderoy looked entirely unconcerned by the threat, though after a moment he decided it would probably be quicker to let Snape finish his work than continue arguing.
Snape returned to grading essays while Gilderoy waited patiently for him to finish.
A few moments later Snape finally placed his quill down and rose from his chair. The previous sessions had already produced results far beyond what he had expected, and although the man would sooner drink poison than admit it aloud, Gilderoy's progress in Occlumency had been absurdly fast.
"You have improved," Snape admitted after studying him for several seconds.
Gilderoy looked pleased with himself.
"See? Positive reinforcement isn't so difficult."
Snape ignored the comment entirely.
"Clear your mind."
The room fell silent as Gilderoy closed his eyes, and a moment later Snape raised his wand.
"Legilimens."
The familiar sensation arrived immediately, but this time something felt different.
Instead of moving cleanly through Gilderoy's mind, Snape found himself surrounded by darkness where fragments of memory drifted past like distant shadows, yet every attempt to focus on one caused the image to blur beyond recognition.
The memories seemed even more obscured than before, and several appeared completely black, as though someone had painted over them with ink. No matter how hard he focused, he could see absolutely nothing hidden within them.
Snape abruptly withdrew, a faint frown appearing on his face as he stared at Gilderoy.
That was impossible.
Occlumency could conceal thoughts and distort memories, but this resembled neither. In all his years of practicing Legilimency, he had never encountered anything quite like it.
Gilderoy opened one eye.
"Well?"
Snape ignored the question entirely.
"Again."
This time Snape intended to push far harder than before, determined to break through whatever bizarre defence continued interfering with his Legilimency.
His wand rose immediately.
"Legilimens."
Across from him, Gilderoy's fingers moved subtly at the exact same moment the spell was cast, making a simple motion he had spent days practicing and one Snape failed to notice entirely.
The moment it happened, something unexpected happened.
Instead of entering Gilderoy's mind, the world twisted around them so abruptly that Snape's eyes widened, genuine alarm flashing across his face as the familiar sensation of Legilimency vanished completely.
A second later he found himself somewhere else. And Gilderoy was beside him.
Neither of them occupied physical bodies anymore, and they instead stood within a vast sea of memories stretching endlessly in every direction, countless scenes drifting through darkness like islands suspended in an endless void.
Snape immediately understood that something had gone catastrophically wrong.
"No."
His voice came out sharp.
"Get out."
Gilderoy blinked, looked around, then blinked again.
"Oh, that's interesting."
"Get. Out."
Snape immediately attempted to regain control. Any accomplished Occlumens should have been capable of restoring order inside their own mind, especially one as skilled as Severus Snape, yet absolutely nothing happened.
The memories remained open, the pathways remained exposed, and somehow Gilderoy felt an instinctive certainty that he could move through them almost naturally, as though the memories themselves were responding to his presence.
Snape's expression darkened.
"Lockhart."
"I'm trying."
"You are lying."
"I absolutely am."
Before Snape could respond, the memory around them shifted once more as darkness dissolved around their feet and the world blurred into a new scene.
Gilderoy suddenly found himself standing inside a small Muggle house, and his smile vanished almost immediately.
The room looked awful, with peeling wallpaper hanging from the walls, broken furniture scattered around the room, and empty bottles lying across nearly every visible surface. The entire place carried an atmosphere of neglect and misery so thick it seemed embedded into the walls themselves.
Then shouting erupted somewhere nearby, followed by the violent slam of a door, and Gilderoy's eyes immediately landed on a young Severus Snape standing in the middle of the room.
The boy looked painfully thin for his age.
Before Gilderoy could properly process what he was seeing, a belt lashed through the air and cracked loudly enough to make him flinch.
Standing over the child was a man, drunk, furious, and towering over his son while young Severus instinctively raised his arms, not in defiance or preparation to fight back, but with the practiced reflex of someone already expecting pain.
The realization alone made Gilderoy's stomach twist.
Then another figure threw herself between them, and Gilderoy could guess who the person was.
Eileen Prince.
Her face was pale, bruises covered her arms, more marked her cheek, and yet despite looking as though she could barely remain standing herself, she wrapped both arms around young Severus and pulled him close, shielding him from the next strike.
The belt struck her instead.
Gilderoy stared at the scene unfolding before him and, for a moment, completely forgot this was a memory. He forgot Snape stood beside him and simply watched as Eileen continued shielding her son despite the bruises already covering her body.
Harry's childhood had been awful, nobody could deny that, but while the Dursleys had neglected him, insulted him, starved him, and treated him terribly, what Gilderoy was watching now felt closer to a horror story than an unhappy childhood.
Another shout echoed through the room, another strike followed, and young Severus pressed himself against his mother while Eileen continued trying to shield him as best she could.
The memory continued unfolding before them, and eventually another face appeared.
Lily Evans.
The atmosphere changed almost immediately, and for the first time Gilderoy saw young Severus smile properly. It was an actual smile, open and genuine, the sort worn by a child who had momentarily forgotten all the ugliness waiting for him at home.
The two children sat together, talked together, laughed together, and for a while Gilderoy finally understood something he had never truly grasped before.
Lily had not simply been a friend.
For years she had been Severus's only real connection to another human being, the one person he could speak to openly, the one person who knew him before Hogwarts, and the one person who made those miserable years bearable.
The memory shifted again, and Gilderoy found himself moving through it almost naturally as the scene dissolved into a train platform before reforming into the Hogwarts Express.
Young Severus sitting in a compartment and almost immediately the Marauders appeared.
Gilderoy had expected tension. What he had not expected was how quickly things escalated.
The memory unfolded much as he remembered from the books. James Potter and Sirius Black were already confident, already popular, and already carrying themselves as though the train belonged to them, while young Severus had barely mentioned Slytherin before the mocking began.
The comments came first, followed by sneers and laughter, while Lily immediately argued back on his behalf, though it accomplished very little. By the time the train reached Hogwarts, hostility had already taken root.
The memory shifted once more as Lily went to Gryffindor and Severus went to Slytherin, and from that moment onward their lives began moving in different directions.
Months passed in moments and then years, and as Gilderoy watched those years fly by he confirmed what he had guessed before.
Snape adapted in Slytherin, learning when to speak and when to remain silent while building connections, maintaining cordial relationships, and playing along where necessary, not because he blindly believed everything being said around him but because survival demanded it.
None of it particularly surprised Gilderoy. Again he had already guessed much of it from what he remembered of the books, though seeing the reality through Snape's own memories painted a far clearer picture.
The memory continued moving, and eventually he began searching for something more specific because he wanted to see how things had actually unfolded between Lily and Snape.
---
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