For those who are wondering, this story is set after Snape 'dies' in Deathly Hollows. However, for reasons unknown to us all, he survived the bite, coming back to a half-dazed consciousness perhaps an hour after Harry and Hermione left him. Exhausted and affected by what would be the equivalent of shell-shock, he can't believe that he's actually still alive, and thinks that he's just in the PROCESS of dying. With that inevitability in mind, he decides that the last place he wants to see in his life is Lily's house, a place filled with the majority of his happy memories. Of course it's boarded up, so he just passes out on the doorstep. Thank goodness he didn't splinch.

In my mind, the reason he survived was because of the same uncontrolled magic with which Harry, for instance, set the snake upon Dudley in book 1, and with which Snape, in his own childhood, unconsciously used to whack Petunia on the head with the tree branch. But you can come up with whatever other reason that suits your fancy. The predominant purpose of this story is not to talk about why he survived, but what he did when he discovered (to his utter dismay) that he was still wholly and unfortunately alive.

Chapter 2

Ms. Beeton kept her promise very well, and she subdued Mr. Robinson to an eventual state of calmness. With a careful pace, she brought him home to her flat, where she forced him in front of the tube to watch the news while she prepared him something to eat.

Perhaps he will think it a trifle odd that I'm serving him dinner when it's not even half past ten! she mused to herself.

Never mind the fact that she added a bit of veronal to his juice unsuspected. She wanted the poor dear to simply eat and go to sleep. Sleeping on a doorstep all night—why, he's lucky not to have taken ill. It's only God's goodness that made it an unusually warm night.

Her immediate need was to call for help from the Doctor. He would know what to do better than she ever could.

When Mr. Robinson ate the aforementioned chicken pie, generous leftovers from Ms. Beeton's dinner the night prior, he went about it lackadaisically with all the muster of a sloth. His host virtually had to feed him, for although he held his fork, he simply dashed it into his food with distaste, mashing the crust into a paste and creaming the potatoes. It was as though he was, after all, ungrateful to Ms. Beeton, halfway even disliking her.

Men are often like this when they've had a good cry. This poor dear probably is just as embarrassed as any one of them ever have been in his position. Probably more.

Soon enough, though, she had tucked him into some of her (long dead) Uncle's things and situated him in her own bedroom. The mauve curtains let only a little light into the chamber, so Ms. Beeton lit her bedside lamp to read to Mr. Robinson.

Ephesians 2: For the grace of God, which brings salvation, has appeared to all men teaching us that denying unjustice and worldly lusts, we shall live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age . . .

Starting at her favorite point, lines eight through nine, Ms. Beeton drolled on until she was certain her patient's drooped eyelids were not again going to raise. Then, switching off the light, she tiptoed into the kitchen to make a very important call.

"Doctor Cromwell?"

"Betty! My dear girl! Where have you been all morning? Did you lose your pocketbook again? I'll have Desmonda look about for it, but I would swear I didn't see it."

He called her Betty—as did most everyone—because her last name, Beeton, lent itself easily to the nickname. Her first name, Jennifer, went generally unused. Ms. Beeton never introduced herself as Betty, but no matter where she went, she ended up addressed as such. It never bothered her like it would many women, but she often wished people would call her Jennifer, if not at least Jenn.

"Oh, no, Doctor, I'm all right, and my pocketbook is right on the table beside me."

"Where are you? Are you lost?"

She smiled at this. Lost! The poor man really thinks I would get lost!

"No, I'm at home, Doctor."

"Then are you ill?"

"No, Doctor. It's rather a difficult situation, actually."

"Ah. I see." He waited for an explanation.

"Doctor, this morning—I did intend to get to the hospital this morning—but this morning I ran across something so extraordinary. A man."

There was a calculated silence, then a burst of laughter on the doctor's part. "My dear Betty, I didn't think our sort was so extraordinary as that. I mean, we only have twelve male patients at the moment, but . . ." He broke off, suddenly, and Ms. Beeton looked to see if the connection had broken. The telephone's red light was still on, however, and so she waited. "All joking aside, Betty, what was so interesting about this man? Did he . . . try to do anything to you?"

Ms. Beeton had to pause and think about what he meant for a moment, then she realized and denied vigorously. "No! No, indeed, Doctor, nothing of the sort. I met him lying practically on the street, and I had to take him home."

"Is he stoned? Drunk?"

"Neither, as far as I can tell. Just sad. And he thinks he killed a girl that died years ago—over a decade, actually—in a car accident. When I woke him up, he just cried and cried and wouldn't give me a proper reason for it all. I do believe, though, that he has some sort of separate world in his mind, a world that was supposed to be a haven from reality but it became a second hell to him."

"I believe you got that verbatim from your favorite book on MPD, my dear."

"But it's true!" she protested. "He talks about strange things . . . like moldy warts and a place called Hog's wart and all sorts of gibberish that no—no normal person would think."

"Great Scott, Betty, is he violent?"

"Oh, no, no," Ms. Beeton murmured, "He's just . . . well . . delusional, and very depresed."

"More of a danger to himself than anyone else?"

"That's my view, I think."

The good Doctor Cromwell sighed. "I'll come at once, then. What's he like now?"

"He's asleep. I gave him a small tad of veronal, and he knocked out fast."

"Excellent. Keep him on a tight leash. I'll come around now to have a look at him."

"I . . . I don't think he has any family or anything, Doctor. From what halting conversation he has had with me . . ."

"I'm coming, Betty. Don't do anything to make him upset." Ms. Beeton's expression turned very serious, but livened when the man's smile was perceptible in his voice. "That's a silly think for me to ask of you, come to think of it." He laughed again, but reassured her again, "I shall be along within a few minutes."

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

The Doctor was as good as his word; not a quarter hour had passed before the roar of his little self-built automobile resounded through the window, and seconds later he was in Ms. Beeton's spacious living-room.

"Someday I'm going to move to some obscure little town named Haddocks-On-The-Bay or Mill-Of-St. Severus-of-Avaranche and never have to deal with traffic again," he grumbled lightly, depositing his worn barely-still-white doctor's uniform upon a convenient hat stand and settling on the arm of the faded paisley-trimmed couch. "So where's our new patient located?"

"My bedroom," Ms. Beeton stated matter-of-factly.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "After you said he was lying on the ground all night?"

"I did give him a decent washing-up first, I daresay."

"In your shower?" The Doctor was halfway amused, halfway concerned.

"Where else? It's not as though I've never bathed a male patient before, Doctor. He didn't really protest at it, just closed his eyes very tightly when I washed his hair and wouldn't let the sponge go anywhere near his privates, which is understandable, I daresay. He's too distressed to really care about washing himself—that much is evident—and someone had to do it."

The Doctor shook his head with amazement and crossed his arms over his thick chest. "Well, Betty, I won't say I disapprove, because you only had pure Christian intent of doing good for the poor man, but I would advise you not to take such liberties on your own again. Your next victim might not be so compliant, and you might end up hurt."

She nodded seriously, realizing that her kindness might not have been taken so meaningfully by some other man. But, then, as she remembered the way Mr. Robinson had listened when she read to him . . . the way he docilely let her rub his body vigorously with a towel and blow him with a hairdryer (granted, he did look at the latter with some amount of suspicion, as though he had never seen one) . . . and the way he had cried on her shoulder with the despondence and utter terror of a child . . . she could scarce imagine him trying to hurt her. He was gentle but hardened, just a child who had to grow up too fast, a poor baby bird thrown from his nest too early but who had managed to get about on his own, never minding the pecks and taunting of the larger birds. The idea of him trying to hurt her was ludicrous—as feeble and pathetic as a newborn foal attempting to stand.

Speaking of which, actually, Mr. Robinson then appeared in the doorway, clad in Ms. Beeton's dead uncle's pink pinstriped pyjamas. He was still under the influence of the slight amount of drug the woman had put him under, and he blinked blearily at both the Doctor and Ms. Beeton, holding onto the doorjamb to keep him upright.

"Mr. Robinson! Shame on you, ducky, I thought you had fallen asleep!" exclaimed Ms. Beeton, sweeping herself up off the couch and approaching him warmly. She noticed Dr. Cromwell's skeptical, appraising eye upon the man, and thought very much that examination could wait.

"I do not sleep well in strange places." He left it at that, merely closing his eyes in long blinks. The disturbed man's focus was bleary, but he seemed to be studying the Doctor closely, guardedly.

"Let's get a urine and blood sample," Dr. Cromwell decided abruptly, drawing from his pocket a black leather folio, which Ms. Beeton well knew contained his travel set of syringes and sample containers.

One of the poor doctor's faults is that he really lacks abilities to treat people like people, instead treating everyone like specimens, thought Ms. Beeton weakly, but she nevertheless took the black folio and propelled Mr. Robinson to the bathroom.

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

"I'd say that definitely your Mr. Robinson needs help, Betty," the Doctor pronounced softly, nibbling from the tray of chocolate cookies the nurse had brought out to replenish Mr. Robinson after drawing the small sample of his blood. The patient had already been sent back to bed, and the Doctor and Ms. Beeton now lounged in the comfortable sitting-room. The telly was on, but went disregarded, instead serving as background noise to distort the conversation lest Mr. Robinson still was half-awake. This was the nurse's precaution; Ms. Beeton hated to have a conversation about someone while they were within earshot, even if the Doctor could care less whether they heard or not.

"As far as I could determine, though," the Doctor continued, "Everything you said to me on the phone is applicable. He is additionally showing signs of overwork, stress, maybe an inferiority complex, and possibly a construed sense of reality. Of course, he appeared to be perfectly 'all there' when we were talking to him, except for the fact that he definitely is very apathetic and very depressed. But, then, with these cases, they so often are capable of responding to the real world while still totally involved within their own. For all we know, he perceives us as actors in a television show in which he is acting, or characters in a book he believes himself to be reading. Maybe he was in the Middle East or something and suffers from shell-shock . . . I'm not quite sure after this brief incomplete diagnosis. At least he answered our questions well enough, it seems."

"It's so sad, the fact that he has no more family," Ms. Beeton said sympathetically, looking over the notes she had taken of the interview. "I mean, as an only child, I know what it's like to both one's parents . . . and the fact that they died so close together, when he was only in secondary school, that's so terrible. How did he get on, I wonder?"

"We'll find out soon enough, though. What did you think of his answers . . . do you believe he was lying at all?"

Ms. Beeton shook her head, adamant. "I doubt he was lying about anything. Whenever we asked an uncomfortable question, he said absolutely nothing. If he was lying, why did he refuse to answer those questions?"

"My sentiments are similar," the Doctor decided with a curt nod. "He had no reason to lie about what information he did give us. He doesn't strike me as the particularly creative type, either, so I do not believe any amount of it was fabricated. He did seem a bit disdainful, surprisingly, somewhat scornful when we tried to get him to talk about his inner world."

Reluctantly, Ms. Beeton agreed. "But it was rather complicated, from what I could tell." At this, she paused to dig in her pocket, and she drew out a long smooth stick of wood. "When I put his clothes into the washer, I found this."

She presented to Dr. Cromwell, who inspected it closely, shoving his glasses up his nose to better examine it. It had a dark varnish, and extremely well-worn, smooth surface.

"It's an awfully pretty thing, I think."

Dr. Cromwell shook his head deliberately. "You shouldn't think so. It's an instrument used by Wiccans. A rod, or wand."

Ms. Beeton was horrified. "Really? No wonder he's disturbed, in that case. But, you know," she added thoughtfully, "He didn't seem to mind me reading from Ephesians."

"Wiccans are, in my experience, gentle folk, and do not like to voice their opposing views very loudly except when with others of their type. However, also, you will notice that the man submitted to a blood and urine sample very easily. Most men would not put up with such demands without an explanation, or at least some sort of a fight. I have seen practiced doctors confront their colleagues angrily about demanding it. The patient we are dealing with is probably just as indifferent to these as to your reading. He's so apathetic that he has lost all hope of salvation, ultimately, and cares nothing for his surroundings. I'll wager that half the time it was being retranslated in his mind, anyhow."

At this, Dr. Cromwell stood and placed a heavy hand on Miss Beeton's shoulder. "Let him sleep for a long while, but bring him over tonight before I go home. I'll take care of the arrangements, so you don't have to sleep on a cot tonight, and we shall begin reconstruction of his broken soul first thing tomorrow."

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .