A/N: This chapter will be considerably shorter than the previous two, but I promise the next will see the third day of the Teacher Swap! Oh, and if you haven't already, I would really appreciate it if you could vote on my poll (which is about this story!).
Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall stood, like guardian statues, around the bed in the far corner of the Hospital Wing. Though not a word passed between them, both knew that the other was concerned.
The musings of the two Professors were cut short as they were both pushed out of the way by a bustling Poppy Pomfrey, who burst through the gap between them, arms laden with phials and strange silver contraptions.
"What are all those?" asked Minerva, her mind rather frozen by her irrational dislike of medical professionals. Even though she realised that Poppy was her best friend and the most capable Healer she had met, Minerva still could not shake the feeling of dread that inevitably built up within her as she stood in the Hospital Wing.
"Mainly restorative draughts and painkillers, but -"
"No, I meant the ominous-looking instrument-things. Anyone would think you were about to probe him or something."
"How did you know?" At the falling of the jaws of both the Headmaster and his Deputy, Poppy continued,
"No, I'm joking! They are here to help me run diagnostics. Now, if you would just stop asking questions and move out of my way, I could get this over with a lot quicker."
Unwilling to protest with the determined Mediwitch, both Minerva and Albus stepped back from the bed and looked on nervously as Poppy worked with impossibly controlled grace. This grace under pressure had been the result of several excruciating years of tending to war-damaged wizards in an under-staffed ward.
After some long, _ minutes, Poppy sighed and stepped away from the bed. At her crestfallen look, the Headmaster and his Deputy felt their hearts drop.
"Poppy? What is it?" Minerva asked, concern clouding her eyes. Albus just stood, solid as the walls behind him but just as silent.
"Severus has been dosed with some sort of sedative," she shook her head before adding, "but it's rare. I cannot identify which one at the present moment."
"Is there anything - anything at all - that we can do to help?"
"Actually," she trailed off and never brought the sentence to a close. Instead, she moved towards a bookshelf that stood stoically next to the entrance to her private rooms. She extracted four different volumes from its shelves and callously flung one at each of the Professors. Minerva caught her book with all the elegance that being a Gryffindor Chaser in school had given her. Albus, however, nearly dropped his as his long fingers fumbled over its spine.
"Check these," Poppy ordered. "Look for potent sedatives that leave no external symptoms."
Poppy sunk into the chair next to Severus's bed and began to leaf through the first of the two tomes she held, searching with the barest hint of desperation showing in her movements. Having gotten over the momentary shock of being ordered about by the Mediwitch, Minerva sunk to the floor and sat, cross-legged and straight-backed, quickly skipping to the sedatives section. Albus retreated to the corner of the room, drew his knees close to his chest and rested his own book atop them. His long auburn hair almost completely obscured his face as his less-than-normally-crooked nose grazed the rough pages.
Silence, that deadly enemy, had them in its clutches for ages. Too long. The three of them were slipping into despair just as Poppy jumped up from the chair in a manner that Minerva could not help but relate to Hermione Granger.
"Aboralis adamenta venom." Poppy popped her head up suddenly from the book she had had her nose buried in, even after she had jumped from the chair.
"What?" asked Albus blearily, extracting his face from the book before him.
"It's the venom of the Plant of the Dead. Under the right conditions it can be used as a powerful sedative. If used in a large enough dosage, it can keep a person out for weeks."
"Is it fatal?" Minerva asked quickly. She exchanged a worried look with Albus, who was trying his best to seem positive. They had found out what it was, all they needed was the cure, right?
"Not usually, no. It takes abnormally large doses for it to become anywhere near life-threatening and Severus does not look to have been given all that much. But it was enough. Do you have any idea how he might have come into contact with the venom?"
"None at all." Both Albus and Minerva shook their heads in perfect synchronisation.
"He didn't eat anything strange? Drink anything that looked out of the ordinary?" Poppy surveyed both of them searchingly as they came to stand once more at Severus's bedside. His face seemed relaxed, but his body was stiff, almost pained.
"No," began Minerva. "I mean, he ate two dinners this evening but that's just because I wasn't hungry so I gave him mine."
"You don't think…?" Albus left the beginning of his thought hang in the air. The first thing he had said since they arrived and it was not even a coherent sentence. Poppy looked from Albus to Minerva with wide eyes.
"Come on, who would want to poison me? Furthermore, how on earth would they be able to orchestrate it?" Hogwarts is the safest place in the wizarding world… apart from the inevitable Potions disasters. Nobody could pull off this sort of thing from the outside. Besides, it was ludicrous to think that somebody – especially somebody from within the school – would want to cause her physical harm, even if she was less than polite sometimes. Minerva simply would not think of it.
"Has anyone been paying you particular attention recently, Minerva?"
"Well, let me see, a school full of hormonal teenage boys sees their Professor turned into a rather stunning teenager –" Albus let out a snort, which Minerva ignored completely. "– so yes. Yes, I have been paid more attention than I am used to recently, Poppy."
"Hang on, why hasn't that happened to me?" asked Albus, looking slightly dejected.
"That is hardly the most prominent issue, right now, Albus."
Before Albus could reply to Minerva's sarcastic comments, the heavy doors to the Hospital Wing crept open. Remus Lupin shuffled in silently.
"Ah, Professors, I was just coming to check on Severus. It's the least I could do, what with him agreeing to brew all of my … potions, you know." They understood straight away that Remus was referring to the monthly potions he required to take away the worst from his full moon transformations. "Have you found out what it was, yet?" He asked, silently inclining his head towards the still form of the Potions Master.
"Aboralis adamenta venom."
"A-are you sure?" Remus stuttered.
"Do you know something about this, Remus?" Albus stepped towards him slightly. It put Remus a little out of his comfort zone to see Professor Dumbledore – a man he had always known as an older gentleman – look at him with those familiar blue eyes in a teenage body. It was a while before it struck him that the eyes had lost their twinkle.
"No. It's just…"
"If you have a concern, we would very much appreciate you telling us." When he saw that Remus was still reluctant to answer, he added, "It could really help."
"I-I showed this plant to a class yesterday – third-year Gryffindors and Slytherins – and I told them about its venom. Well… Neville Longbottom correctly answered a question about it, but still… you don't think one of them would… I mean, I know Severus isn't exactly polite… but to do this?"
"It wasn't aimed at Severus."
"What do you mean?" Minerva forced an elbow into Albus's ribs. Consequently, his reply was a little strained.
"We… erm… we think it was a joke that went a little… off-path."
Ron Weasley grumbled as the third-year Gryffindors and Slytherins were shepherded by a tired-looking Professor McGonagall. Add to that the fact that he still could not stop gawping at her since he found out she had been turned into her teenage self, and you had a recipe for a rather distressed boy.
Professor Dumbledore was already standing on the raised platform at the front of the Great Hall, just as he had done that very morning. He did not look happy. The third-years were lined up in front of it in a similar way to how they had upon their first evening of school and they all bore a similar nervousness in the pit of their stomach to that they had felt before their Sorting.
"Curfew begins in ten minutes," Professor Dumbledore started once the last few Slytherins trickled in from the dungeons. "If we do not find out who orchestrated this foolish trick by then, you will all receive detentions until we do." He swept over them with a glare similar to Professor McGonagall's. "It was dangerous. Stupid. Reckless. If anybody has any idea of what… what idiot started this, I urge you to come forward now. Your silence is just making it worse for your fellow students."
After a long moment of anticipatory silence, Draco Malfoy piped up at last:
"Why don't you ask Longbottom? He seemed to know a great deal about the blasted thing." He directed a venomous scowl at Neville, who, to his credit, held back the urge to cower that he felt building up in his muscles.
"Or how about we ask you, Mr. Malfoy?" asked Professor McGonagall. "You seem rather intent on fixing the blame on somebody else." She had done it now. She had all but accused Malfoy – the son of a governor – of having tried to poison her. She was certain that his father (the slimeball) would hear about this.
"Why would I try to kill my own Head of House?" he smirked with an eyebrow raised in a cruel mockery of her own expression.
"This trick was not meant to kill anybody. Neither was it aimed at Professor Snape." A round of badly-hushed whispers swept the room at the Headmaster's revelation.
"Then who?" asked a Slytherin girl, Pansy Parkinson, if Minerva was not mistaken. Minerva looked at Albus imploringly but he mouthed back the word 'sorry'.
"We believe that the target was actually supposed to be Professor McGonagall." Not even a whisper. Just silence.
"Nobody is willing to speak up?" Again, the words were met with silence from the students, who had given up on shooting suspicious glances at rivals and had settled now on watching their own shoes intently.
"Then you will all report to the Transfiguration classroom tomorrow at six sharp for detention. Off to your dormitories."
The class shuffled off, groaning quietly to each other. Dumbledore sighed heavily when only he and his Deputy were left in the Great Hall. He had not expected for any information to come to light, but that did not stop him from being disappointed.
On the way back to the common room, as the Trio shuffled along with the other third-year Gryffindors, Ron was taking great delight in fervently spinning his theories.
"I would bet my Chudley Canons shirt that it was Malfoy!"
"How many times have we blamed Malfoy, only to find out that it wasn't actually him?" sighed Hermione. Harry, drifting somewhere along in the rivets of his thoughts, was only paying enough attention to be aware of which direction his feet were headed in.
"Erm… I lost count… but this time I really think it was him!" Ron's ears had turned to a shade of red startlingly similar to that of his hair.
"I'm not brewing more Polyjuice Potion to find out!"
Albus Dumbledore was silently preparing tea in his office after the disastrous meeting in the Great Hall.
"Why would someone want to do this, Albus?" Minerva McGonagall sighed as she accepted the steaming cup of tea that was all but forced into her hands. "As if I haven't been through enough already this week!" It sounded selfish as soon as it had left her mouth and she wished she could suck all the words back in immediately. This wasn't about her. Not anymore.
"You talk as though you have nobody to help you through this," said Albus. He turned back to his friend with an unbearably pained expression. "You are not alone. Whatever is going on here, we will sort it out. Together." That one word. So inviting yet terribly portentous for reasons that Minerva could not quite identify.
"I don't know what I would do without you.
After a long silence, she rose from her chair and placed her barely-touched cup of tea on a side table. As she swept out of the room, she left in her wake a single sentence.
"You know, you don't look half bad as a teenager, old man."
A/N: If you are reading this, I love you from the bottom of my heart and thank you for your patience. If you are not reading this... then it's quite irrelevant because you cannot see it! :)