The Joy it Brings: Chapter 1
By Polexia Aphrodite
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all affiliated characters, places and objects belong to J.K. Rowling, etc. Marianne Price belongs to me.
Notes: This is a continuation of The Confession of Miss Price. I've recently reworked this first chapter into third person, to reflect the end of the first part of the story and because it's easier on me as a writer. It feels too weirdly personal to write in first person. Maybe it's just me.
Last but not least, reviews are appreciated and really do help! Thanks in advance to everyone taking a moment to give me some feedback!
After everything, Marianne Price returned to St. Mungo's. She saw then, with alarming clarity, that her life would return to the settled, normal pattern it had had before Hogwarts, before him. She took a flat in Muggle London and commuted to the hidden wizarding hospital daily, spending th bulk of her shifts caring for victims of Death Eaters who still suffered from the residual effects of the dark curses that had been cast upon them. Two weeks passed, then three. She knew that, out of the seemingly mindless rituals of work, home, and sleep that those weeks gave birth to, a vision of the rest of her life was emerging. She saw herself continuing indefinitely in the Spell Damage Ward on the fourth floor of the ancient hospital, hoping for promotions and, eventually, an office of her own, spending quiet nights researching in her tiny apartment, perhaps one day gaining the gall and inspiration to ask the friendly Augustus Pye from the Creature-Induced Injuries Ward out for a drink sometime. When she felt up to it.
She thought of Severus from time to time. It was an inevitable compulsion, she told herself, hoping to ease her guilt. She often thought of the moment of Voldemort's defeat in Hogwarts' Great Hall. She had been working desperately with Madame Pomfrey to remove the injured students from the dangerous path of the Dark Lord and his followers as they cut a deadly path through the school. In those wild, frenzied moments, she had still managed to hear Potter's fateful revelation about him. She hadn't had the presence of mind then to fully understand everything that had been implied, what it truly meant.
It was two days later, reading Rita Skeeter's hysterical exposé entitled Severus Snape: Vile Villain or Love-struck Lothario?, that total realisation struck her, rendering her speechless, a strange desire to yell or sob or cough or choke rising in the back of her throat. The worst of it was that she knew how much sense the article made. Every wary glance, every tense, desperate embrace, every moment of softness and every flash of unbridled wrath were suddenly subject to untold hours of bitter analysis and reinterpretation. Thinking about him at Hogwarts had once made something warm and aching swell in Marianne's chest, but thinking of him after his death only made her jaw clench and her mind reel under the new strain of doubt, jealousy, frustration, and despair.
Three weeks after Voldemort's fall and her return to St. Mungo's, she had been in the ward's main hall, the rickety beds crowded with twisted bodies whose tortured moans haunted her wakeful nights, when she was called into the hall by the imposing, unexpected figure of Minerva McGonagall. She had rarely had the occasion to speak to the newly-minted Headmistress before that moment, when she was told in low tones that she was urgently needed back at Hogwarts. It seemed to her a new insult, another vicious attack on still-fresh wounds. The thought of being in those cold, stone halls again, in the same rooms that she had been with him, touched him, seen him, cared for him, made her hands ball uncontrollably into fists and her nails dig into her palms. She asked why, but received no answer.
In the end, she agreed. Repellant as the idea of returning to Hogwarts was, she decided that yet another addition to the litany of unfortunate decisions she had made over the past few years could do her no more harm than it already had.
Arriving at the familiar school had been everything she had expected. A torrent of memories tore through her consciousness. McGonagall led her mindlessly through a maze of moving staircases and emptied corridors, stopping at last at the door to the hospital ward. Marianne's brow furrowed deeply, incapable of suppressing the visual manifestation of her confusion at the Headmistress's unfathomable determination to reclaim a Healer's Assistant. McGonagall turned to her.
"We had hoped you wouldn't be needed," her voice was nearly a whisper, but predictably officious just the same, "but I understand you have some particular familiarity with curing the Dark Arts. And perhaps a certain familiarity with the patient as well."
The older witch swung the door to the ward open. Marianne saw Pomfrey first, her hands crossed over her chest in an expression that recalled the impatience and suspicion she had had the first time she had encountered the young import from London. Marianne's gaze traveled to the bed next to her. There, covered by a pristinely white sheet, was Severus Snape.
Her first instinct upon seeing the former Potions Master lying prostrate before her had been to submit to the rush of numb shock that had claimed her and crumple to a heap on the hard, unforgiving floor. Instead, she took two shaky steps forward, struggling to keep her expression neutral, unwilling to let either of her female companions see how vulnerable he could make her.
His hair was a lank, unwashed stain on the white pillow, but his skin was impossibly pale, nearly matching the stark bedding. By there, against the deathly pallor of his neck, were two angry welts from which extended an expanse of purple and blackened flesh.
"I've been administering a blood-replenishing postion," Pomfrey interjected testily, "But we're not sure how to reverse the damage."
"And we don't know what's keeping him alive," McGonagall added, looking down at the man before her.
Gladly letting her instincts filter through her blank distress, Marianne began running diagnostic spells. Pomfrey complained that she had already tried to determine his condition, but the younger witch knew that there were some, darker ways of diagnosing that only a mediwitch with aspirations in Dark Arts healing would bother to learn. And that's when she found it, a sense of sheer absurdity gave rise to the utterly inappropriate urge to laugh, which she quickly suppressed.
To the bewildered demands of her two companions, she revealed, "He's swallowed bezoar. It wasn't able to reverse the effects of the venom, but it absorbed enough to keep him alive."
Her mind spun, even as she articulated her own findings.
How had he known to take the bezoar? When did he take it? How had he known it would work?
Against the cacophony of her own thoughts, she set to examining what she could of the venom with Pomfrey's assistance, the pair of them devising a regimen of potions that would hopefully have the effect of restoring consciousness. In truth, she would later struggle to remember the details of the moments following the moment she had seen him again. She marveled at the idea that she had been any help at all.
Hours later, she was left alone with him to administer regular doses of various potions. Sitting in the chair next to his bed stirred memories of the first night she had kept watch over him in the ward. The world had changed so incredibly since that warm summer evening. In those halcyon days, she had had hope for the future, for her career, for a chance with him. She had now spent so much time at Hogwarts as to ruin any hope for real success at St. Mungo's and she would forever be relegated to the role of 'assistant' at Hogwarts as long as Pomfrey reigned in the ward. And Severus. The devastation she had felt at his apparent death had been nothing compared to the utter annihilation of her last shreds of optimism when she learned that, since the moment she had met him, she had already lost him to a woman who had been dead for nearly twenty long years. A woman she could never have known or suspected. A hot, prickling wave of anger and humiliation swept through her at the thought, bringing a stinging flush to her cheeks.
Though her vigil wore on into the small hours of the morning, she didn't sleep. Though a hard lump of emotion settled in her throat, she didn't cry either.