Medical Musings

"Will you please follow us, madame," said the wizard, his head lowered a little to look Minerva in the eye, "we ought to talk in my office." He outstretched a hand. "For a proper talk," he then added. "My name is Courtus Lestrange. I am the new Deputy Head of the Department for Creature-Induced Injuries. Never attended Hogwarts, but I have heard quite a lot about you, of course."

"Professor Minerva McGonagall, pleased to meet you," Minerva managed, taking in the entirely unfamiliar, lined face. Then, with a sudden, desperate notion, her grip tightened around his hand. "How is he?"

"He will live," said the healer curtly. "But please… lets proceed to a more suitable place."

Minerva nodded and all three of them strode towards the double doors leading into the nearest corridor, leaving a dissatisfied Toke in his position as the emergency watchman.

A short way down the corridor, the wizard called Lestrange halted in front of a light, wooden, somehow sterile-looking door, which featured a small bronze sign stating his name and rank, as well as a drawing, made by a child, of some vaguely human-shaped being who was holding a wand in a single-line-arm. Minerva merely glanced at it, interested, though not particularly curious about the healer's private life.

The inside of the small, rectangular office had a somewhat homely feeling, despite more sterility. Its walls were, again, plastered with pictures drawn by small children and also photographs of what looked like man's family. There was a fair-haired man (his brother?) of about thirty or forty years holding two boys, who, Minerva suspected, might be the artists in question.

Lestrange followed her gaze and smiled. He seemed to sense that she had calmed down immensely at his reassurance and Minerva decided to keep the general tone of the conversation straightforward and rational from now on, as befitting her position as the headmistress of Hogwarts.

"Your nephews?" she enquired formally, pointing at one of the larger photographs.

"My sons, actually," he replied, conjuring a tray with three cups and a steaming pot of what Minerva assumed was tea. He offered both witches a seat and then marched up and down the room a few times, seemingly unaware that he was renewing his guest's uneasiness. There was a small, uncomfortable silence before Minerva finally spoke.

"He will live," she said in a voice of forced calm, longing to hear what other news the healers held for her in terms of Severus's well-being, "will he?"

"Live, yes," replied the man gravely. "But his condition is nevertheless extremely worrying. It seems he used a potion attempting to stop the blood flow – unsuccessfully, of course, under the circumstances. We are not sure how he is going to live what with his own attempts having affected his own magic quite thoroughly… "

"But you just said," Minerva interrupted impatiently, despite all her initial intentions. "that you do know he will live. Are you or are you not sure of what is happening to him?"

"Oh, we are fairly sure that he will survive," replied the witch sternly, who had taken a seat beside Minerva, and was already sipping some tea. "But, as I say, we are not entirely certain as to how he will live. Magical damage is often more dangerous than mere injuries. It is clear that he would have died, had he not so crudely closed the wounds before he fell into coma, but as it is, we are now dealing not with mere blood loss, but with a complex form of a disordered theurgic system. I do not know if you are aware of what kind of potion your friend used that allowed him to survive for hours before he came here?"

Minerva shook her head, unable, for now, to even look at the teacup in front of her.

"He… his name is Snape, is it?" Lestrange interrupted himself.

"Yes," said Minerva quickly. "Severus Snape. He is a colleague of mine."

Lestrange, a flicker of averse recognition appearing on his bearded face, nodded and continued.

"Well, we don't know how he came by it, but your friend Snape was carrying a very rare substance in his pockets. A recent invention by one of my colleagues, in fact, Hippocrates Smethwyk. The substance is specifically designed to close wounds caused by a specific breed of snake – a reptile of extraordinary size, it seems, which is unique on the British Isles…"

"You-Know-Who's…" Minerva breathed.

"So I understand," said Lestrange mildly.

"Do you happen to know," said the woman now, who overall seemed to prefer to remain silent, "how your friend came by such a valuable and, until recently, unknown mixture?"

"He will have supplied himself with it as soon a he knew it existed," Minerva began. "He has always been very careful to protect himself. An excellent Defence Against the Dark Arts student at his time, I was told. And what with his job – he will have witnessed people die from that snake. Perhaps even devoured…" She broke off, not entirely aware of how much she could safely let on so shortly after the final battle. The situation had been like this for several hours now – uncomfortably insecure. Dumbledore's portrait, obviously content with the turn of events, had settled quietly in his painted chair, apparently willing to allow matters to proceed now without his interference. The only person who held the strings together now, the only one who actually knew how to proceed from here, Dumbledore had told her with an amused twinkle in his painted eyes, had gone to bed in Gryffindor Tower for a good night's sleep.

"He used to be our Potions Master," she finally decided to say, not without effort. "Licensed up to the umpteenth level. For all I know, he could have brewed it himself."

"Impossible!" Lestrange cut in. "The recipe was not out for public use. It is a highly dangerous…"

"The hospital was subjected to Ministry searches, however, was it not?" Minerva enquired guessingly, unable to figure out exactly how Severus had come by the very potion that saved his life. "There will have been leaks."

"Yes, the new Ministry has… its own ways of dealing with data protection," Lestrange nodded.

There was a small but meaningful break. None of the room's three occupants looked each other in the eye, but all, Minerva knew, thought the same. What a shameful stage it was that the wizarding community had reached during the peak of this war…

"Please tell me more about Severus's injury," Minerva said eventually, her voice a little hoarse of emotional strain now. "I would like to know as much as I can."

"Of course," Lestrange replied promptly, walking towards a small screen, on which he made odd circular movements with his wand before a set of funnily coloured pictures appeared. He studied them for a while and then nodded.

"Moody is at her best, I see. She is still at it, as you can see here," he pointed. "These are quite recent shots. I should not worry about your friend's condition, professor. He is very lucky to be treated by one of our best."

"Healer Smethwyk is the expert on snake bites around here, though, is he not?" Minerva enquired.

Both healers confirmed this.

"It looks as though your friend is already going to suffer fewer side-effects of the potion or the bite than any of us dared hope," Lestrange informed the headmistress. "The 'poison' this particular kind of snake produces does, in fact, consist of nothing more than a few proteins, which keep human blood from congealing. Nothing life-threatening."

"Nothing life- but what use would such a kind of poison be to a snake?" Minerva replied, startled at these news.

"Well, we are not completely sure," said the witch healer now. She was bag-eyed and quite lively in appearance. Her greying hair was tied in two buns on each side of her head, and she smiled continuously as she spoke. "Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Priscilla Pye – my nephew was healer-in-training during the time when we were nursing our first case of this particular injury."

"Arthur Weasley," guessed Minerva bluntly.

Both healers exchanged a brief look, which Minerva took, not without satisfaction, to signify dawning comprehension at how much she actually knew of this matter.

"Indeed," said Lestrange darkly. "And at the time, we thought we were fighting a much more complicated substance. It turns out, however, that we were not. As I already mentioned, Smethwyk was able to come up with a solution rather quickly once we realised we were dealing with a snake that lets its victims bleed to death before devouring them."

"Not a usual breed?" Minerva enquired.

"Some sort of python, surely," the healer replied, but with a 'venom' that enables it to kill its victims quite effectively with one bite. Usually, snakes of this size kill their victims via constriction. Our theory is that this one takes a bite first, then winds itself round the body, and eventually squeezes the blood out until its prey loses consciousness. Though this one will have been interrupted, as it obviously did not stay to feast."

"Lucky he happened to have an antidote on him," Minerva mumbled, ignoring the unspoken question of who could have the power of distracting a snake this size from its chosen meal.

"Yes, indeed," replied Lestrange tensely after a short while, "a curious coincidence. The snake was… under someone's influence then? The… his… You-Know-Who's influence, perhaps?"

"It was," Minerva replied darkly. "I never knew… why, he was certainly well prepared…"

"And he got the recipe from the Ministry?"

"I assume he did."

The three exchanged another look that left many things unsaid. Minerva considered for a moment, if rolling out her colleague's entire motivation and background for supporting the Death Eaters was worth her time and patience at this precise moment, but then decided against it. She was well aware that Lestrange had recognised Severus for who he was, or who everyone had thought he was. Since his admittance of the Carrows into the school, Severus had ceased to be an unknown man. But this was not the time, nor the place… the Daily Prophet would see to the spreading of the news Potter had told them such a short while ago. AND they would be able to present evidence, which she, Minerva, did not have at her disposal at the present time.

"Do I understand quite correctly," she said instead, taking her cup of tea at last to take one or two sips, "that it is not the snake's venom then that your colleague is fighting in there, but the potion Severus used?"

"Correct," replied Healer Pye, glancing at her colleague's screen. "The problem now is that your friend used so much of the potion, probably seeking to counteract the snake's poison as quickly as possible, that it seems to have destroyed some of his theurgic system on the way."

"The theory is such," Lestrange went on explaining, "that a person whose natural theurgic defence is seriously tampered with… for example by a high-levelled potion such as the one my colleague and friend Smethwyk invented… that such a person will have difficulty living under normal wizarding conditions afterwards. Their personal magic, theory says, will be so unstable that any kind of everyday magic – you know, household spells, flying broomsticks, architecture maintenance spells, and so on – well… any of these are going to be potentially dangerous for such a person. And this is what Moody is trying to counteract at the moment. If I know here, she will be attempting to seal in the effects of the potion somehow…"

"Of course, we are not yet sure as to the degree of the damage," Healer Pye added. "If Snape is indeed a skilled Potions Master, he will have been aware of the danger and might have thinned the potion down before using it, in which case he might actually return to teaching once Moody is through with him. The more potion he used, though… and judging from our first impression, he spread it quite randomly everywhere over his back… well, let's say I suggested to Moody to go easy on pain-killing spells and potions just in case those are already strong enough to lead to a breakdown of his entire theurgic system."

"What exactly is this 'theurgic system', if you don't mind me asking?" Minerva enquired, now unable to follow the conversation without this particular piece of information.

"A kind of personal defence every witch and wizard has," Healer Pye replied patiently. "It works a little like a magical immune system. You know how a Muggle can suffer on a bodily level in terms of injuries and illnesses?"

Minerva nodded, slowly. She did not have all too much experience with Muggles, but had assumed as much.

"Well, wizards and witches can suffer on two different levels," the witch continued to explain. "Most ailments a Muggle will complain of we can counteract with potions and spells, but there is a second level on which only our kind can be harmed, which affects a person's own magic. Sometimes fatally."

"You mean such an illness could turn a witch or wizard into a squib?"

"In the broadest of senses," Lestrange said vaguely. "Though this is amateur speech, of course."

"Well, I am an amateur," Minerva replied crisply. "So please explain to me, in dummy terms, exactly what is happening to Severus's 'theurgic system'. And what the effects will be."

"We do not know for sure," said Lestrange darkly, "as I have been trying to explain. But if the potion has indeed caused grave damage, I can tell you that your friend might have to spend some time away from places where magic flows freely, such as Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Godric's Hollow, Camden… any place that features a high wizarding population, really. Some time meaning months or even years. Depending on the greatness of the damage, however, I must say that this could also mean… forever."