Disclaimer: Not mine, no money is being made off of this and all recognizable characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and subsequent copyrights and publishers.
Author's Note: And on to the next installment! Thanks for the reviews, they really made my day!
On to the show!
~*~ Madame Pomfrey ~*~
Every year, the first Friday after classes had started, was the exact same. Every new student admitted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was required to report, with the rest of their year mates by house, to the infirmary for a routine checkup. Headmaster Dumbledore humored the yearly exams she insisted upon and you could tell by his expression he felt they were as necessary as the Minister of Magic. Healer Madame Poppy Pomfrey wasn't going to back down when the well being of a child was in question though.
As it was the headmasters' indulgent attitude didn't change the fact that three out of every ten Slytherins returned to school beaten and bruised, it didn't change the fact that typically three to ten of the new students entered Hogwarts from abusive home of one kind or another. They were over looked, they weren't muggleborns and only those entering into the wizarding world mattered to a population that was killing itself. The purebloods had some of the worst reputations in the entire community, but that didn't mean that while they were at Hogwarts they weren't children and human beings to her.
In her opinion the only real reason she was even allowed to run the tests was the board of governors. She had taken her finding to them and persuaded them to allow her the freedom to do whatever she could to heal these children. A year later she was back in their esteemed presence requesting the services of Severus Snape. She had fought long and hard to make sure that any child found coming from an abusive home was giving over to her care and she had complete autonomy over them until the end of the school year. This ensured that there was little that could disrupt the lives of those damaged children. Stability gained trust, which allowed for healing.
Unfortunately she could provide her findings of abuse all day long, but unless the children themselves decided to talked to Wizarding Children Services there was nothing that could be done about the situation. It wasn't like she could petition the Service for them, she was a third rank healer, a low man on the totem pole so to speak, she would need to drag in all kinds of specialist to evaluate the child before it might be deemed that she had a sufficient case and be escalated to the proper department.
That kind of an investigation could take months set the children back in their healing months maybe years and would be just as traumatic as the original abuse more often than not. No she had gone that route before, and she wasn't about to drag any other child through the mud like that again.
So she stuck out her chin, pushed up her sleeves and fought the headmaster at every turn.
~*~
At the welcoming feast and sorting of September 1991, two incoming students had caught her trained eye as coming from less than loving homes. One was expected, pureblood Draco Malfoy, no real surprise there. Lucius Malfoy was not known for being a patient or caring man. The other, which would be a much bigger dismay to the staff, was none other than Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived.
Any abuse made her blood boil, it just wasn't right that magical folk in particular but humans in general took to harming children, but to lay a hand to harming the savior of the Wizarding world? That was unspeakable and someone should have been watching for it.
Even so, as much as it bothered her, there wasn't anything she could do differently than had been done for any other child in his shoes. The headmaster would either deny the entire possibility or merely insist that it was for the best, and while Harry may not have arrived here in the best condition he had arrived here, which was better than not at all.
No she would leave that report to Severus to make, he was much better at making sure the headmaster allowed them the time to make sure the children got the care they needed.
The headmasters' indulgent manner allowed for the fact that Severus always looked out for the children under his care. If that meant stealing them away in the dead of night then that was the price to pay. If it meant making sure there was a more permanent solution to the situation, well the man was once a Death Eater, it's not like he would blink an eye at killing a man.
Though there were lines that Severus simply would not cross for anyone. He would never lay a hand on a woman in anger, would never strike a child without good cause, and was fiercely loyal to anything that Lily Potter had cared about; including Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. If Harry Potter was safe in anyone's care it would be with Severus Snape, as long as the man could get past his dislike of the boy's father of course. Pig's had flown though, not naturally but they flew none-the-less, so it wouldn't be that terribly unlikely an occurrence.
No, there was no doubt in her mind that Harry Potter would leave Hogwarts in far better condition than the state he had arrived in. All of the students entering into Severus's mentoring program had left Hogwarts at the top of their class, with offers of high profile careers and had been highly successful in those careers. That was more a success to their program then any award could have been, though an award would look so nice sitting on her wall next to her certificate of completion to her training, the letter of acceptance to the Healer University, and the letter of congratulations she received upon successful completion of their program.
She wasn't an idiot in any case, she was well aware that her contributions to the healing of the children were minimal. She couldn't relate to them. She came from a loving family, her mother had been there every step of the way to ease hurts and encourage her successes. She and her sister had followed their father's footsteps in the medicine. Her sister worked at a small non-profit hospital in Geneva working side by side with muggles and squibs. No, there was no hardship in her past; there was never a fight to merely survive. She had never had to choose to sacrifice part of who she was merely to please someone else. She had never had to rely solely on her magic to make sure that she could meet impossible demands. But Severus had.
Severus was an only child of a very powerful empath and a muggle. His father had been a drunk from the moment Severus could remember until the man passed away when he was in University studying psychology. His mother turned to drink to cope with her empathy. She had pickled her liver by the time she was twenty five, it had been only a matter of time after that before the organ gave out on her completely and she passed away. After his mother passed away, Severus was given to his maternal grandmother. The woman was a widower and would ensure you knew it. Her husband has passed away without an heir. So she had inherited everything. She named Severus her heir and had set about making him into what she thought he should be; the perfect Pureblood heir.
Severus had the fortunate and unfortunate luck to inherit his mother's gift. He had learned better ways of managing the overly powerful gift without turning to alcohol thankfully. The man had other vices and weaknesses but not that.
Most of what the world saw from Severus was just foul moods, brooding silences and a sheer genius at potions. They couldn't see past the prickly outside. No they saw a Dark Mark, a Dark wizard and felt his scathing wit when approaching him with the mundane.
They didn't see the abused child, the devastated man who had lost the only woman he loved to another man; they didn't see the utter destruction of a person when the news of Lily Potter's murder had reached him.
They didn't see what a struggle it was for Severus, a struggle that had ended in a suicide attempt, and she hated to think what might have happened if she hadn't needed to request more potion stock for the infirmary that night, to stand back up on his feet and continue to live. She still wouldn't say he was truly living but maybe Lily's boy could help him where she had failed.
Poppy Pomfrey shook the wool from her head and turned her mind to the task of checking out Ronald Weasley, who while unremarkable in every other way, was extremely klutzy and prone to injury. Probably more so then the rest of his siblings combined; which included the infamous Charlie Weasley, who was currently a renowned dragon tamer and had played seeker on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The stunts that boy had pulled while playing should have turned his mother's hair grey. They had almost given several people heart attacks at his sheer audacity.
No she had no business trying to heal the scars on the souls of those children; Severus was the perfect candidate for their healer. He could spot the signs of depression and was apt at circumventing those signs from escalating past a certain level of apathy for the world around them. He would listen, comfort and counsel the children without coddling them. He would force them to test their limits and push past them. He would be there day or night to talk with, as long as they didn't mind the impossibly black teaching robes or the lavender bath robe.
Without letting out the sigh of relief at having only Harry Potter left to check she set about swishing her wand in a pattern she was all too familiar with and clearly stating an incantation that would be forever ingrained in her memory. She watched as the boy's eyes widened slightly from the wash of magic that rolled over him. She then held her wand up at a slight angle to her chest and recited the spell that would give her a paper copy of the results. She scanned over the results listed, they were far more numerable then she had originally imagined, before releasing the sigh she had withheld and ordering the child to sit on the bed and not move. She stated where she was going and how long she would be until she returned and then left the infirmary at a brisk walk down into the slightly damp, slightly chilled dungeons to request the assistance of Severus Snape on the behalf of one Harry Potter.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
And there you have it. I have most of the next chapter writen so that should be up sometime tomorrow evening hopefully. But I'm not quite sure where to go after that so it might be a while on chapter four.
Cheers!
