Hello and welcome to a new chapter of Save the Saviour! Again, I am not JKR and I'm not getting any profit from this story, only the gratification of others pleasure. Enjoy!
Chapter 3 - Dumbledore
Albus Dumbledore was in his office when he got the floo call. Harry Potter was in the hospital wing.
He smiled sedately through the fire as Poppy Pomfrey told him of the abuse the 'poor boy' had endured, all the while cursing his pathetic pawn. Albus had told the boy time and time again not to be caught or show any signs of weakness, yet that was exactly what the boy had done.
Stepping through the fireplace into the infirmary, he spotted the prone Potter boy, blissfully sleeping, all comfortable - the complete opposite of what he himself had told him to be. His usually twinkling blue eyes filled with anger as he glared at Harry, taking in what he could see if his injuries and vowing to make him pay.
"Ah, Headmaster. Thank you for joining us," Pomfrey said, walking up beside Dumbledore.
"Us, my dear?" His eyes now held their usual gentile gleam.
"Us. I was the one who discovered the boy." Severus Snape had also joined them, stepping out from behind the curtain around Harry's bed.
"My boy!" Dumbledore declared by way of greeting. "Thank you both for bringing this to my attention. How long until he is fit to leave?"
"I would say a week, Headmaster, but it is ultimately up to you." Pomfrey tutted, her soft gaze settling on Harry's sleeping form.
"I shall take him to my office when he awakens - for examination." Dumbledore then turned with a nod to them both, and left, leaving if unspoken that they would alert him when Harry came round.
Harry woke two hours later, his mouth dry with sleep and his head fuzzy, but not full of remnants of nightmares, for he had none.
"Poppy!" Snape, who was still at Harry's bedside, called out. "Inform the Headmaster that Potter has awoken, please."
Headmaster? NO!
"No, sir! Please... Not yet," Harry pleaded.
"Is there a problem, Potter?" Severus raised a languid eyebrow, becoming suspicious as to why the child seemed afraid.
"No! Well... Yes." He furrowed his brow before sagging in apparent defeat. "No, sir."
"As you were then, Poppy." Snape turned to the witch, who had entered the curtained off cubicle to confirm that Harry was, indeed, awake. At her colleagues dismissal she left to make the floo call to Dumbledore.
Harry was frightened. He knew this would eventually happen, hence keeping himself to himself. The Headmaster was going to be livid, and Harry would suffer for it.
Twenty-five minutes later, in Dumbledore's office, Harry knelt before the vengeful man whose power radiated from him in crackling waves.
"I'm sorry, sir! I tried. Honestly, I did." Harry stated, not dating to move, even to look at his master as he plead his case. "He noticed - he sees everything, Professor! I thought I'd hidden it."
"Enough." The Headmaster's voice was so quiet, Harry had to strain to hear him. "No more excuses. Get the dagger, boy... NOW!" He added as Harry hastened to do as he was told, standing quickly and moving to a hidden draw where his master kept his torturous devices. Harry retrieved the weapon he was to use upon himself today: an 8 inch, straight edged dagger with with a shining ruby crystal at the helve.
"Sir, I-..." Harry made one more attempt to save himself.
"Not another word. Self preservation is a Slytherin trait, and you above all know how I despise those cowards." The old man paused, as if considering something of utmost importance, before ordering Harry to pierce his gut to the hilt and twist until the glorified knife had turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees.
Harry's eyes widened at the task, but he did as he was asked, getting up his Gryffindor courage, and plunged the dagger deep inside himself. He nearly passed out at the pain, but Dumbledore urged him on.
"Twist it. Do it, boy." Dumbledore's maniacal eyes shone as he watched the boy scream, crimson blood a stark contrast to his alabaster hands. "Yes. That's it. Good boy!" He stepped over to the agonised child, placing a withered hand atop his head as if praising a puppy.
Harry thought he was going to die. The pain he was in surpassed anything he'd ever experienced. At first, he screamed, but at the satisfaction this seemed to give the Headmaster, but his lip as he twisted the dagger around in two swift movements, before dragging it out and flinging it at the monster's feet.
Blood poured from his abdomen and Harry was almost sure he had hit an artery, as the copper smelling substance sprayed, covering both his and the front of Dumbledore's robes.
"Heal yourself." The cold words were the last thing Harry was aware of before he collapsed into a puddle of his own foul blood.
He did, unconsciously, obey the Headmaster's last command, although he would always bear a scar the size of a Galleon under his left rib cage.
He woke up uncountable hours later, stuck to the floor by crusty bodily fluids. Harry vanished the mess and, not seeing his master anywhere, took his absence as permission to leave.
On his way out the door, for the second time that day, he collided with a figure, knocking the wind from his bruised lungs.
Snape had been anxiously waiting for Harry's return to the hospital wing, but when, by evening, he had seen hide nor hair of either the boy or the Headmaster, he grew impatient.
After letting Poppy know, he'd gone up to the Headmaster's office, bypassing the stone gargoyle with a muttered 'sugar quills' and ascending the stairs. Before he could knock, however, none other than Harry Potter himself came barrelling through the door as if fleeing from a stampeding herd of hippogryffs, crashing ungracefully into Snape's firm chest.
"Ha-Potter! What has taken you so long?"
Harry shook his head to clear his thoughts, disorientated a having bumped into someone so soon after his ordeal. He had hoped to make it back to the hospital wing with pigs encountering anyone, not wanting the questions that were likely to be asked. "Just talking to the Headmaster, Sir."
Snape squinted his eyes suspiciously, sensing that Harry was not telling the truth. "Don't. Lie. To. Me. Now I ask again. What took you so long?" The menacing look on his pasty features made Harry want to shrink in on himself.
He didn't know what to say. 'Oh, my master just made me torture myself, leaving me in a puddle of my own secretion for hours on end, not even bothering to check if I was still alive,' didn't sound very good in his head. Instead he stood his ground, stating once again that he'd been talking to the Headmaster and they had lost track of time.
"Hm," came Snape's cryptic reply, his own mind reeling at the possibilities of what the boy could be hiding. Before he could comment further, Potter had shot past him at an alarming speed for someone so recently injured. "Potter, wait!" But he called out too late, spinning round just in time to see the end of Harry's cloak whip through the closing gargoyle guarded door.
Harry ran until he couldn't breathe, stopping at the entrance to the hospital wing doubled over, shaking hands gripping his knees hard as he struggled to take in short, shallow breaths.
"Mr. Potter! What is the meaning of this?" Minerva Mcgonagall turned the corner, spotting the hunched up child and rushing to his side. "Let's get you back to bed shall we?" She tutted, he crisp voice heavy with disapproval. "Poppy, he's back."
Madam Pomfrey practically flew into the room, taking one look at Harry before ushering him over to his warded off section of the infirmary. She let out a heavy sigh as Harry fell into the bed, slippers still firmly on his feet, and took inventory of his current condition.
Her breathe hitched as she noted a new injury, and her eyes widened at the description written on the magical medical parchment.
"Poppy... What is it?"
"Albus, no! It can't be." And with that, the elderly woman collapsed into a dead faint on the hard linoleum floor.