In Need

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An hour later, Professor Snape quickly and silently made his evening rounds of Slytherin, limiting his inspections to its dormitories and common room instead of making his usual rounds throughout the castle. As he went back through the common room, he saw Draco Malfoy ahead of him, about to leave. Draco turned when he heard someone approaching him from behind. Seeing that it was Snape, Draco sauntered over to him and gave him a knowing look.


“So you\'ll have heard by now that Father has come home,” he drawled casually. “I imagine he’ll be dropping by to see you one of these days.” Draco shifted the overnight bag he was carrying from his hand to his shoulder. “I had some things to take care of here, and am just on my way home now. See you after break.”


Snape’s eyes registered a mixed expression of sadness, concern, and regret, which Draco missed entirely. As Snape searched the young man’s face with his intense black eyes, he laid a large hand on his shoulder and pressed it kindly. He nodded to Draco and swept past him into the dormitories.


Professor Snape looked in on the handful of Slytherins who were staying at Hogwarts through the holidays and then made his wayoughough the halls to the infirmary, stopping on his way at the castle’s main entrance. Waiting there at the door for him was a healer from St. Mungo’s hospital. The medi-wizard gave him a look of surprise and opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by a brief shake of the head from Snape. The two walked quickly together to the hospital wing.


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When the two wizards entered the private back room of the hospital wing, they warded the door and hurried over to the drawn curtain and pulled it aside. Inside the examination area, a very bloody and mangled Severus Snape still lay unconscious on the examination table while Poppy Pomfrey worked carefully on his head wound. Megan Waters stood near him holding her hands over him and concentrating, her face a sickly shade of gray.


“Oh good - I’m glad you’re here, Jeremiah,” said Madam Pomfrey looking up and seeing the healer come in. “He is in bad shape. There’s so much bleeding everywhere that I’m having a hard time containing both that and stabilizing his breathing.”


Jeremiah walked over and started to work with Poppy, and Megan started to move away. “No, my dear,” the upright Snape said to her in Dumbledore’s vo “yo “you keep that up until he is out of danger.”


“But I don’t know if it’s helping,” she said shakily. “You know that my magic doesn’t work as well with sentient species. I’m not a healer.”


The polyjuice potion was wearing off by now, and Dumbledore’s features began emerging through Snape’s. With a wave of his wand, he transfigured his robes back to their usual appearance and put his hat on.


“No, my dear, you’re not a healer,” he said to Megan, “but you *are* an earth mage. You hold a connection to life that none of us do - you may not be able to mend his wounds, but right now we need help just containing his vitality.”


Jeremi pre presence was immensely helpful. With another pair of hands to help contain the damage, the healing progressed much more smoothly. Wound by wound, the bleeding was stopped and repairs were made.


When Severus was no longer teetering on the precarious edge between life and death which he had been straddling for the last couple of hours, Megan excused herself and barely made it to the bathroom in time to throw up. She retched repeatedly, the image of Severus’ wounds wrenching her guts. Her head felt fuzzy, and she splashed cold water on her face to try and collect herself. She rinsed her mouth out and returned to Madam Pomfrey’s side. Dumbledore came up to her and gently laid an arm around her.


“He’ll obviously need to be here awhile, Megan. Go get whatever you need, and I’ll make a bed ready for you next to his.” Seeing her reluctant face, he said kindly, “Go. He is in good hands.”


By the time she returned, Megan saw that they had been able to significantly reduce the swelling on Severus’ face, and he was beginning to look more like himself. Jeremiah was currently holding Severus’ eyelids open one at a time and murmuring healing incantations over his bloodied eyes. Megan sat down on the bed next to his and watched him, long after the healers had finished working on him and gone to rest for the night, and long after the school was quiet. Watching his breathing, she didn’t sleep the entire night, and she also wanted to make sure that if he woke up, someone would be there for him.


After Madam Pomfrey was up early the next morning, Megan grudgingly went to freshen up and get something to eat, and then returned to Severus’ bedside. When Dumbledore came in to check on him a bit later on, Madam Pomfrey put her finger to her lips, signaling him to come in quietly. She gestured to Severus’ bed, and Dumbledore saw Megan kneeling on the floor at Severus’ side with her head resting on her arms on the bed, finally sleeping.


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Awhile later, Severus began to wake up and immediately remembered what had happened, and sensed that he was not in his or Megan’s quarters. Judging by the smell and by the feel of the bedclothes, he was in the infirmary. His head was pounding mercilessly with a blinding white pain, and the rest of his body felt like it had been thrown over a cliff and was then trod upon thoroughly by each of the remaining centaurs in the Forbidden Forest.


His eyes still closed, he felt something soft tickling his hand. Gingerly, he slowly moved his hand a few inches, and then felt hair. Megan’s hair. He moved his hand a bit more and slowly wound his fingers into it. He focused on Megan’s softness and tried to use it to block the pain until someone came - hopefully soon - to administer his medication.


Fortunately, Poppy immediately noticed his movement and bustled over with potions for pain and fever and carefully administered them. After a few moments, he felt well enough to open his eyes. He turned his head over on his pillow and looked at Megan sleeping at his side, still kneeling on the floor. He reached over to her and softly stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.


Madam Pomfrey’s eyes opened wide in surprise at seeing such a tender gesture coming from Severus Snape, and her hand froze in midair on its way to check his pulse. Megan’s eyes opened, and she sat up with a gasp when she saw that he was awake. She gently lay her hand on his forehead and looked into his eyes, a mix of pain and compassion in her expression.


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With hof tof the holiday over already, the students were frantically trying to make the most of their break, and the assignments that they had been given were set aside by most of them in favor of more festive pursuits. Sledding trips, parlor games, and outings to Hogsmeade filled their days, but as the days passed, the looming shadow of homework could no longer be ignored.


“Why do they have to give us so much to do? It’s supposed to be a holiday!” complained a disgruntled Ravenclaw. “Snape’s the worst - a two foot scroll on the properties of dragon’s blood and why it is an essential potions ingredient!”


“What a jerk,” chimed in another student. “Like his work is so important that we all have to drop everything else and use up all of our time worrying about fucking potions. He doesn’t have anything else to do, so he thinks that no one else should.”


“I know! And why does he have to be so nasty all of the time?” chimed in a third student who had joined them around the fire. “I mean really, what the hell is his problem? I heard that he gave Andy Creevy detention just for asking him a question.”


They continued to enthusiastically vent their extreme dislike of the vile potions master, not really getting much done on their assignment after all. It probably wouldn’t have surprised them to know that they were not the only group of students having a similar conversation that evening.


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Megan was running as hard as she could, pounding each step into the ground as she moved along. It was dark and starry, and snow crunched under her feet. Firenze ran silently beside her, allowing her the silence that she seemed to need. As they ran toward a large old tree, she sped up, jumped in the air, and grabbed onto the lowest branch, her feet dangling above the ground. She proceeded to haul herself up and climb further, feeling the strain in her back and arms ae pue pulled her long frame up. Firenze paced below her on the ground, his hooves stamping in the snow.


A few moments later, she dropped lightly to the ground next to him and kept going along their original course. It amazed her that he could move around so comfortably in the cold since his skin was bare from the waist up. She supposed that it probably helped that he had two stomachs to consume enough fuel to sustain his mass and high metabolism, and two hearts to pump warming blood to his extremities. He was an amazing creature in so many ways, and she was awed that their cordial acquaintance had deepened into a true friendship.


As they came back to the castle, Firenze\'s hooves echoed on the stones of the path. He paused and looked down at Megan, trying to choose his words carefully.


“I think that I am not mistaken in reading a change in the celestial tide. The dances of the stars and planets have been telling a story that has been long in the making, and they appear to indicate that change is near.”


Megan looked up at him, not sure how to reply. “We should not speak about it here. I will arrange for a place to continue this conversation, and I would like for Dumbledore to be a part of it.”


\"Very well. Goodnight, Megan, I’ll see you tomorrow.\"


He trotted off to his grotto, and she ran up the stairs to her quarters, musing about what he had said. She knew that the battle was coming, and she wondered if that was what Firenze had seen in the heavens and what he would have to say about it.


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Severus sat in a comfortable armchair by a crackling fire, studying a series of diagrams in an ancient book of spells. He looked up when Megan came in and felt the now-familiar tug of warmth as she came into his presence.


Megan had told him nothing about what happened after she had found him after the last death eaters’ meg, eg, except that a healer from St. Mungo’s had come in to help Poppy and they had worked on him for hours before his wounds were mended. Dumbledore, gh, gh, had informed Severus that Megan had helped to contain and hold his life essence, and it was likely that without her help, he would not have survived the injuries long enough for Jeremiah to have been of any assistance.


For the first time out of all the times he had survived such extensive injuries, Severus found himself grateful to have lived. His life with Megan brought him daily pleasure that he had never dreamed possible before knowing her. During his recovery over the past few days, Megan had capably and tenderly taken care of him, since he had refused to stay in the hospital wing once he regained consciousness. He had seen the worry in her eyes that she tried to disguise for his sake, and he was glad to see that it now appeared to have abated.


“Do you feel better?” he asked, laying his book aside and reaching for her.


She knelt down in front of his chair and leaned up into his kiss. “Yeah, it wasealleally good run, and it was nice to be outside for awhile. It’s cold, but it’s so fresh.”


“I am pleased to hear it, but that’s not what I meant,” he said, giving her a meaningful look.


“Oh,” she said, catching on. She looked into his eyes and felt his tenderness toward her and his recognition of her own concern.


She replied sincerely, “If you can bear this, then so will I. We will do what we need to do to get through all of this, and when it’s over, we’ll have the rest of our lives ahead of us.”


He pulled her into a tight embrace. “The rest of our lives together,” he murmured against her cheek.


He settled back into his chair to read and Megan changed into a white cotton shift and let her black hair hang in loose waves down her back. She lay down on the rug in front of the fireplace with a calendar, which Ernie immediately wandered over and lay down on. Megan shooed him off it, and he started playing instead with a toy mouse that Severus had charmed to run and squeak when Ernie tried to pick it up.


Flipping through the calendar, Megan asked, “When would you like our wedding to be?”


“I hadn\'t really thought about it - did you have a big wedding in mind?”


“It\'ll have to be. And there will be the issue of muggles mixing with magical types - we will have to set up decent perception alterations to shield some of the guests, but I think that with some basic planning everyone that we want can be included.”


“Hm.” Obviously, his side of the guest list would be quite short, and he would just as soon have married her without delay in a small informal gathering. But he knew that including friends and loved ones was important to her, and that a celebration like the one she had in mind took some planning. “Will you be a June bride, then, my love? The term will be over andcan can take the whole summer for our honeymoon.”


Smiling, she replied, “I like the idea of going away for the summer, but I was thinking of May first for the wedding. Wouldn\'t it be fun to get married on May Day?”


“Whatever you wish. You will be my beautiful May queen then,” he said with a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.


Having a date made the reality of it sink in all over again. Megan scrambled to her feet and began to hop excitedly around the room, chanting, “We\'re getting mar-ried! We\'re getting mar-ried! We\'re getting mar-ried!”


Severus calmly stood up, put his book down once more, and caught her in his arms on her next lap past his chair. He ced hed her mouth to his in a passionate kiss, and they stumbled their way over to the bed, kissing and pulling at each other\'s clothes.


“Are you sure you\'re ready to try it?” Megan gasped to Severus as his hands ran down her bare back and his fingers hooked into her panties.


“I\'m *quite* sure,” he replied in a husky voice. “Any more self-restraint on my part should, at this point, be considered terribly detrimental to my recovery…”


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After sweetly having made up for lost time, they drifted into a much-needed good night\'s sleep.

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A/N - Thanks to all of you who have been following the story - hope you like it. As always, would love to hear what you think - if you have a minute, drop a review! :-D

shemhamforash - Thanks!!! I\'m so glad you like the story, and your review totally made my day! You really know how to flatter a girl! :-) Really though, I know that the original characters are so beloved, that it\'s hard to make an OC that can fit in with them. There are definitely so many great SS/HG combinations that I can see why they keep so many people happy! Glad thour our foray into a new combination was good for you, and on behalf of the OC writers, welcome! Best wishes to you.

~~**Rapunzel**~~