A Rumination

It was a silly thing, to feel as she did. But somehow...Madam Pomfrey couldn't help it. This boy, he had a mother, a woman who could fuss over how (little) he ate, if he was warm enough and what he was doing in the middle the night. However, while his mother could do these things, she didn't seem to. He came back to Hogwarts more gaunt than when he'd left for Chirstmas holidays; he wore a cloak still in need of patching on its' elbows and if the purple bags beneath his eyes were anything to go by, the woman hadn't once thought to ask what her son was doing in the middle of the night when he should be sleeping.

What good was it for a boy to have both parents listed as living and present if they did nothing? Such a description gave one a false idea - a false hope - of how things would be in his home. Stable. Supportive. Loving. From what Madam Pomfrey had observed over the past six months, the boy had none of these things. It showed, too, in how he behaved. How he was quick to lash out, but slow to trust. How he talked big yet showed little proof besides a near prodigious knowledge when it came to potions and oddly enough, History of Magic.

It was a curious thing. Pomfrey wondered if the mother had taught him about those subjects, she'd even thought to ask the boy once; when he'd come in with a broken nose. He had stared at her in an incredulous way and declared quite haughtily, "What I know, I learned all on my own!"

She came to a different conclusion after that meeting. This boy had hit, what could only be called, a jackpot. While living with his disinterested mother and rough father, he'd found something. Maybe while hiding, maybe while trying to chase away nightmares, maybe like so many boys, just bored on a rainy afternoon; he'd discovered a small, and forgotten stack of books.

And with the voracious mind of an unloved and unstimulated child, he'd absorbed it all so he could be filled with something. It was not warm, it was not kind, but it had given him something else. Those books had endowed him the mind of an analyst, as he had likely read and re-read potions recipes and theory over so much he knew how the puzzle pieces of potency and timing worked together just so to give a potion its' property. And the books of history, all those names of kings, conquerors, inventors and dreamers; from them he'd learned ambition. He'd read their stories so many times that their need to be somebody had rubbed off on his impressionable mind and Pomfrey bet the boy knew exactly who he wished to be listed amongst in future texts books.

One day, maybe a day or so after the break, the boy came into her infirmary. He had one black eye and a split lip. Today, though, he was alone. Going to him, she'd asked quite fretfully, "Oh dear, what happened?"

"Met the wrong end of Black's fist, that's what," he grumbled at her.

Exhaling through her nose, she made him sit. "Usually you bring at least one of them down here with you when things get this bad," she remarked as she went for the bruise salve.

A glimmer came to his black eyes.

What had her boy done? Was Black stupefied and shoved in some forgotten closet to be found twenty years from now by a pair of horny teenagers looking for a bit of privacy? Pomfrey did not like this feud the children were in, but she did like the idea of the haughty ones getting knocked down a peg.

"You see, Madam Pomfrey, I spent the holidays working on something. It was a jinx. I call it melofors, it puts your head in a pumpkin. It's really amusing, actually..." He frowned. "But you see, Black didn't think so when I cast it on his dear friend, Potter."

Dabbing his lip clean as she listened to him, she asked, "And you didn't hit him back? That's not like you."

"He sort of just punched me and hurried off before I could get him back because Potter was freaking out about the pumpkin on his head as he tottered around. They didn't have Lupin with them, you see, and Pettigrew is no help. That simpering idiot was too busy panicking to be any assistance to Potter."

Finishing with her cleaning, she began to apply the bruise salve. "Hm, I see," she murmured. "You know, fighting like you do really isn't appropriate behavior."

Wincing a little as her fingers touched his bruise with the salve, the boy gave a half-shrug. "They were jerks first, I'm only making sure they don't win. Losers never get flattering depictions, you know."

"I do know," Pomfrey sighed. She wished he hadn't read so much history. Then, maybe, she could have taught him to think differently about things; but it was too late to fix things that were already set. So, the best Madam Pomfrey knew she could do was give this boy a listening ear when he needed it and a bit of care when he came about injured or not-injured.

Finishing up with him, she smiled and told him, "Now, Mr. Snape, if Mr. Potter and his friends don't come by injured later, I won't report what happened today to the Headmaster, alright?"

The boy's face flashed with a smile. "Thank you Madam Pomfrey," he said.

"You're welcome, dear," she replied with a bit of her own smirk.

Thoughts?

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