Into The Light

I own nothing you recognise. This chapter was beta-ed by the Amazing! Alexandria!

Severus was trying to convince himself that it did not mean that he was going soft to show some concern for the girl as he approached the door to the infirmary just after dawn on the Wednesday morning. He wasn’t the first there.

Potter and the entire Weasley brood were present, with the exception of the girl - he presumed that she was in with Granger. He nodded at them in acknowledgment, and received the same in return. They seemed much the same as they had at Ronald Weasley’s funeral, shell-shocked and grieved. Potter looked like he had been crying and was still scrubbing at his cheeks occasionally, while the twins leaned against one another and Molly was wrapped securely in her husband’s arms and didn’t look as if she was going to emerge anytime soon. The remaining three redheads were leaning against a far wall, expressions grim, talking in low voices. Arthur met his eyes with a pained expression. Severus walked over to him, and asked in a soft voice, “Any change?”

Arthur shook his head. “Poppy said she’s filled out a bit since you brought her in, but if that’s how she looks once she’s filled out a bit, I can’t imagine…” He trailed off, his eyes going unfocused. Molly’s muffled sob came from his chest, and Severus could vaguely make out a litany of curses that emerged from the red headed bundle, mostly directed at the Malfoy family it seemed. He was unsure how to reply when he was saved from his own social awkwardness by the female Weasley, who exited the doors at a run and threw herself at her parents; apparently, Granger’s appearance was hitting them all hard, despite his earlier warnings.

“Professor Snape?” It was Potter again. He tried not to make his scowl too big. “Do you want to go in and see her? Only we’ve all been in already, and if you don’t we can start making schedules for who’s going to sit with her.” Severus nodded, and went into the infirmary, shutting the door behind him.

She had filled out, he thought as he approached the bed, for all it was minimal. She still looked as if she’d been starved, but the hollows in her cheeks and under her eyes were just not quite as pronounced as they’d been. Her skin tone had also gained some colour; she no longer looked parchment-pale. Her breathing was shallow, almost as if she were restless, but she was still alive, still fighting – he felt marginally better having confirmed that to himself.

Severus suddenly felt remarkably useless. He knew she couldn’t hear or sense his presence in any way, why was he here? What possible purpose did this visit have, other than to assuage some ridiculous worries he shouldn’t be giving time to anyway? He turned to go when Poppy emerged from her office, looking remarkably stressed considering she only had one patient to attend to.

“Severus! Just the man I need!” She looked at him with an expression of hope.

“What?” He could be still short, and snappy, he thought, grimly pleased. Worrying over one stupid ex-student who’d gotten herself into a pitiful predicament was not turning him soft.

“It’s her,” the mediwitch gestured towards the sleeping girl. “I need something that will suppress her dreams. The relaxants I’m using to keep her asleep aren’t working, and every three hours, like clockwork, she has the most fearful nightmares.”

He raised one eyebrow. “How do you know this?” The woman checked her watch.

“Give it five minutes and you’ll see for yourself.” She said cryptically.

“But Poppy, you’ve got-“

“Multiple dreamless sleep variants, but they’re all addictive. Too addictive for her, she wouldn’t survive coming off them right now. I need you to make a milder variant.”

The eyebrow would’ve travelled higher if he had had the musculature for such a feat. “Certainly Poppy,” he made sure he didn’t sound overly sarcastic with the mediwitch, whom actually didn’t annoy him too much in general. “Coming up with something like that should be a breeze – it’s isn’t as if healers and researchers have been trying to do such a thing for decades already.”

She gave him a scathing glare. “Severus, this is not an idle request. I didn’t say one that was not addictive, I said mild; I’m not asking the impossible.”

He sighed – he could at least give it some thought, he supposed. “How strong are the nightmares it’ll have to combat?”

“As I said, wait and see.” She disappeared into her office. Severus sat on the chair beside Granger.

He stared at her without seeing, his mind already poking at the problem that had been set, the challenge that was issued. Most potions to combat nightmares and dreams were based on extracts from the Asian poppy, which even muggles knew to be dangerous to get involved with, but it was, admittedly, successful. It left the imbiber’s mindset so fractured and dislocated they didn’t have the coherency to suffer dreams, not even while unconscious. The poppy would be the element that needed replacing in the potion, but this had been realised by researchers, and a search had been in progress for years.

‘Maybe I could get a hold of some of the previous field trials that were rejected because of unexpected reactions in a minor percentage of the populace,’ he thought, ‘after all, if it’s only going to be used on one person, it could be tailored to minimise any unwanted aspects.’

He frowned, and the thought suddenly popped into his head that Granger’s nose could be described as cute, if he were the type of person to stoop to the use of such an adjective. He growled at himself, when the clock above her head let out a small chime, and Poppy rushed in.

“Hold her ankles!” She barked at him.

He leapt up and pinned the girl’s legs to the mattress, looking at Poppy with a question in his eyes. It was answered for him by the girl on the bed. She started screaming.

Screams that tore at her throat and at his mind, terror filled screams that seemed to beg you to do something, to help her, to stop the pain and the fear. He heard shouts and the sound of the infirmary door opening behind him, as he concentrated on keeping her still as her back arched and she thrashed desperately. He could hear Bill and Percy Weasley casting calming charms with a note of panic in their voices as hers rose another octave, beginning to make his ears complain.

Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped, and she subsided to the bed with the guileless grace of a collapsing hot-air balloon. The silence was loud between them as they stared at her. Severus had sudden insight into why Poppy was looking so stressed.

“Calming charms don’t work,” said the mediwitch in question breathlessly, brushing an errant strand of hair back into her bun. “I’ve tried them, so has Minerva, even Albus. She just doesn’t respond. So Severus, as you can see, I need that potion.”

He nodded soundlessly.

“Come on now,” she said, seemingly back to the bossy version of herself. “I need to sponge her off again before her parents arrive. Out, OUT!” They shuffled obediently towards the door.

“Parents?” He muttered to Arthur.

“Yes, yes,” he said, sounding almost amused. “Muggle dentists, I think. Not normally allowed at Hogwarts, but it was thought, under the circumstances…”

“Muggles at Hogwarts?” He was trying very hard not to let it show on his face that the very suggestion of this appalled him.

“Well, never been done before obviously, but it’s not every day we have a student that returns from the dead, and the Headmaster has been pulling strings with the energy of a demented bell ringer-” Severus had a sudden image of Quasimodo with a long, white beard and twinkling blue eyes, “-to get them here, absolutely insistent that they be allowed to see her. And to be fair, what could they have done? Kept her from them? I think not.”

Severus nodded absent-mindedly, and headed to the dungeons to work on Poppy’s request.

***


Several hours later, and with old copies of more than a decade’s worth of Potions Weekly scattered around him, he was making little progress. In fourteen years of the magazine, the only article it contained relating to his search was a two inch piece announcing new research had been approved after the latest trials had failed. He would have to ask Madame Pince to sound out anything for him in the library’s copies, which went back far further than his own. He also foraged through his address book to see which contacts in the industry would be able to give him any insights, and was in the process of making a list when Albus’ head appeared in his fire.

“Severus?”

“Headmaster,” he nodded gravely at his mentor and friend.

“Ah, perfect!” The head beamed. “If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll come through.”

Severus sat back from his desk, resigned to whatever onerous task the Headmaster was about to place at his feet – it wasn’t like he’d ever succeeded in wriggling out of one of his requests anyway.

The blue-robed elder stepped gracefully from the hearth – a skill Severus envied. He himself had never succeeded in travelling by floo without pitching head first out of the other end – one of the reasons he was so skilled in apparating, actually. The Headmaster twinkled genially at him.

“Cockroach cluster?” Severus starred at him in disbelief. He’d managed to draw the parallel that the more nefarious the sweet you were offered, the more unpleasant the task that was about to be proposed – he suspected that Albus thought if you refused his first offer, you were less likely to refuse the second, although how the old man had arrived at that logic was anyone’s guess.

“No. Thank you.” He cocked an eyebrow at his guest, a silent ‘get-on-with-it’, and Albus took the hint.

“Miss Granger’s parents have just left, and they would prefer it if you would be the one to send them progress reports on how she is recovering.” The headmaster looked away for a second, as Severus gaped at him in disbelief.

“Me?” Albus nodded, and Severus could have sworn the bastard was hiding a smirk.

“The reformed Death-Eater, the one person who resembles the sadists that were responsible for Miss Granger’s condition? Her most hated teacher and the person who is loathed by both her friends and enemies alike? For God’s sake, why Albus?”

“Because they are not all that trusting of us right now, for we were the ones who lost her, but you brought her back.”

“I lost her too, blast it, and it was luck entirely that I found her, not the result of some endless, self-sacrificing quest I had put upon myself. Why don’t they ask the Weasleys or Potter?”

The headmaster sighed. “Because, in their minds, Messer’s Potter and Weasley, and all their reckless rule breaking, is one of the reasons for her condition.” Severus snorted, too appalled to be amused at this moment. “Further more, we advised them that she was dead and to give up what was thought to be a futile search, but then she was found alive after all.”

“But they agreed!”

“And now they feel almost overwhelmingly guilty for, as they see it, giving up on their child at the one time she needed them the most. But you succeeded where we had lost all hope of doing so, and brought her back, and now they would like your progress reports in addition to Poppy’s and my own.”

Severus let his breath out in a huff. He was tempted, very tempted indeed, to tell them to sod off, and let them see that the man who had rescued (although maybe rescued was too strong a word) their daughter was very far from the hero they were making him out to be.

Yet the image of Granger as she had been this morning flashed in front of his eyes and gave him pause. He had been driven mad with worry over her condition, it had driven him to actually check up on her, on a student he had never liked in the first place. If it was his daughter that had been found in that condition…


“Fine,” he said in a flat voice, disgusted at himself and his sudden Gryffindor characteristics. “They may expect my reports bi-weekly. I shall also include general progress on the dreamless sleep variant Poppy has requested for her.”

Albus seemed to realise that Severus had been pushed to the end of his good-will, and beat a hasty retreat, muttering his thanks, as the Potions Master broke into the whiskey.

***


Three weeks, he thought, sulkily, stirring the infusion of hellebore and wormwood. Three weeks of daily visits, and experiments, and he had arrived at Poppy’s potion so fast he knew it would have made any professional brewer’s jaw drop. But it wasn’t fast enough for Granger, who was scheduled to finally make her way into the land of the living this afternoon. Poppy recommended a few comforting faces be present to start off with, so while Potter, Dumbledore and her parents would be present, he had managed to cry off. After all, exactly who would take comfort from his great mug?

He carefully wiped off the rosewood stirring rod, and put it with the rest of the contaminated instruments, then settled back to feel smug satisfaction that always accompanied a well made potion, even when it was done by his students, although he hid it in class.

‘Whiskey’ he thought, ‘I damn well deserve it too, they won’t want my progress reports now they can actually talk to the chit.’ He nodded, pleased, and then headed for his drinks cabinet, which admittedly, due to the stress of the last few weeks, was in need of restocking, when he heard Albus’ voice calling from the fireplace, and tried not to swear too loudly.

“What?” He was not holding back on his annoyance this time.

“There have unforeseen complications with Miss Granger, we need your expertise, now.” The headmasters tone brooked no argument. Severus grabbed some floo powder, hoping that whatever was happening would be enough to distract them from his less-than-graceful entrance.

It was.

Poppy was comforting two people in muggle clothing on the bed, the woman – the mother, he supposed – was sobbing hopelessly, while the father merely stared at the floor with a face like thunder.

Potter and Granger, meanwhile, formed a strange kind of tableau in a far corner of the ward. She was crouched down in the corner, rips in the gown Poppy had put on her, and rocking quietly backwards and forwards, crying softly. He bore a bloodied scratch on one cheek that could only have come from her nails, and was crouched about three feet away from her, hand outstretched, obviously trying to tempt her out. Dumbledore was watching both of them with a frown that was concerned and sad.

Severus didn’t even realise he’d slipped back into ‘Professor’ mode before he heard himself bark the words “MISS GRANGER! You will get back in that bed immediately, is that understood?”

He hadn’t been prepared for those wild hazel eyes to lock on him without hesitation. Then he saw something like hope flash into them.

“M-master?” she stuttered, and Severus felt his stomach drop out the bottom of his shoes.

Author\'s notes: Can you say \'imprinting\'? Very good! Ten house points to any who saw it coming.

Hmmm, activities last night and this morning: Revise? Nope. Check past papers? Nope. Check exam times? Nope. Rewrite this chapter, and get three chapters in on a new eleven chapter piece? Check once, twice and thrice. Dammit, so much for self-discipline. But to make myself feel better, I\'m going to be sadistic, and post a taster of my new piece, which won\'t be going up until it\'s done, damnit, I\'m tired of WIPs.

“I am asking you also to protect him. May I introduce you all? Meet Severus Brutus Snape, aged 2 years, and 122 days.”

Cackles wildly, and runs of to revise, finally.