"But… Albus…" The woman stuttered, clutching her silk robes to her throat as if her broach was in danger of slipping. "How could this be?"
Her companion sighed, in no hurry to give her any sort of honest answer. They were both hyper-focused on the unconscious raven haired boy, newly admitted to the Hospital Wing, so quiet and still that even his disturbingly racking breathes almost made them jump.
It had been less than two hours since Headmaster Dumbledore had found the scrawny boy, sprawled out on the Hogwarts lawn with no shame in the world, and those two hours had been enough to turn everything in Minerva McGonagall's ordered and structured world upside down. She was always protective of her lions- for good or ill, nobody would deny that she is fiercely protective of her lions- but now, with the utter incongruity that had marked this day, it was somehow a slimy Snake who held all of her attention. Minerva turned to Madame Pomfrey next.
"Tell me again what the diagnostic report said."
Poppy, shooting her friend a concerned look, picked up again the scroll on which the results of Snape's diagnostic had been automatically recorded and poured back over the results. They were far from pretty.
"Improperly healed broken ribs and several other bones; internal bruising; intensive kidney damage from malnutrition, scarring, and the like."
She trailed off. She could not keep going. The stern and typically composed Head of Gryffindor House also found herself at a loss for words.
There was no need, after all, to ask who had done this to the boy, who had been the cause of these- substantial- injuries.
"You had better not be thinking what I think you're thinking, Albus," she finally growled under her breath. Poppy looked sheepishly from one imposing teacher to the other, unsure of where this was heading.
"What choice do I have, Minerva? I know of no one else willing to take him in." He glared at the other. "What precisely do you propose I do?"
"You can't send him back there! Not knowing what you know now! If you do, Severus will know. He will know that you knew how that Muggle beat and abused him- and he will know that you did nothing."
They were interrupted by a piteous moan from the hospital bed. Instinctively, Minerva's hand went to the drenched and sweaty forehead, causing a slight squirm from the small form under her. Dumbledore noticed this, and it was enough to cause him to frown slightly. Slowly, Poppy handed the other woman a warm rag, which she used to brush off Severus's overtly pale and sallow face, her troubled gaze lingering for longer than Dumbledore considered necessary before she handed the damp towel back to the matron.
"Surely… surely you see that I have no other option," he finally spoke. Discovering the abuse of one of Hogwarts more unpopular and solemn students had definitely shaken these two staff members, but Albus remained steady and firm, even as an irate Poppy turned to face him.
"No other option?" Her voice was low and fierce. "No other option but to send him back to the father who put him in this situation, to begin with?"
"I'll take him."
Albus blinked, not sure, for a moment that Minerva had spoken. She was not looking at him- was not looking at anything, indeed, but Severus, her steely gaze unfixed and unmoving. She did not know what had made her say it; raising a teenager was an incredibly different endeavor than teaching them, after all, and she certainly wasn't equipped to take a growing teenage boy into her quarters.
But stopping the boy from getting back into that brutal muggle's hands usurped all else in her mind. At that moment, it was done, and it made Albus Dumbledore gasp.
When she thought back on it, many years later, with her son a teacher by her side, she knew that she wouldn't change any of it for the whole world.