Disclaimer: Not my people. Not my universe. Those belong to our beloved J.K. Rowling. The plot is mine, though, and I love it dearly. Hope you do as well. Feedback is craved, relished, chewed thoughtfully and digested completely. Review here or find me on Facebook or .uk as Carol Oster. No galleons accrued to my bank account as a result of this story. No dragons were harmed in its crafting.

CHAPTER THREE

AWAKENING

After an eternity, Snape found himself well and truly… awake? his eyes opening to mere slits after minutes or hours of effort. It was dark. Still night? The same night? A dark blur resolved itself into a Someone who sat next to him. He was too weak to cry out in fear – the Dark Lord returned, he supposed, to be sure his servant was well and truly dead, or to taunt him with his victory over the boy. He braced himself, accepting that his work was not done, that his punishment was not yet over, and worked his way up – torso, chest, shoulders, neck, chin, lips – moving, though he could not make out the words – and finally eyes. Impossibly green eyes, framed by a black, mussed tangle of hair, a stark red scar barely visible beneath the fringe. The boy, illuminated in the glow from his wand tip, was watching him so intently he felt burned anew, but he could not turn away. Not. Possible.

But he devoured the boy with his eyes. Delusion or no, he wanted this. He needed this. He's alive. He's safe… safe… safe. Potter…

"Is it…" His voice was hoarse, papery thin, barely audible even to his own ears.

"It's over. Riddle's dead," the boy murmured in the darkness.

"How long?"

"Four days."

He tried to sit up, but the boy pushed him back on the pillows, and he was shocked to find he could not – did not want to – resist, Potter's face so close to his, determined. He could not turn away, could not keep from watching the boy. He was safe… safe… safe…

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his rasping voice nearly undone by the tears constricting his throat.

The boy looked at him, startled. "You saved me," the boy said. His eyebrows drew down in a frown of puzzlement – or wonderment. "You spent half your life saving me. You nearly died to save me. What do you have to be sorry for?"

"Lily… James… Black… Dumbledore…" the litany of those he could not save rose like a black cloud to overwhelm him, and sobs shook him.

"It's all right, Professor… It's all right… Go back to sleep," Potter whispered, and brushed the dank hair away from his brow with a gentle hand, something the man did not understand, a puzzled frown relaxing from his face as he fell back into sleep.

His fear drove him to the surface time and again. He fought his way awake, for what must have been the fourteenth or fifteenth – or fortieth or fiftieth – time. I must get to the boy. I must save him. The boy was always there – reading silently, curled up asleep on a chair at his bedside, murmuring to unseen others. But no matter – he had eyes only for the boy. Alive. Safe.

Potter slept curled on a chair next to him, one knee near enough to touch. Snape reached out a hand – Is that my hand? – to assure himself that the boy was real. Warm flesh met his touch, and holding onto that truth, he fell back into a dreamless sleep.

And then, sun flooded the room, warming him where he lay, and he came to, gradually alert, aware that he was… alive, awake, hungry… and needed to go to the bathroom. The boy was gone, and he nearly panicked, thinking it all a dream, a delusion, and struggled to sit up, shocked to find himself too weak to manage even that.

"Severus!"

Poppy strode over to him, relief and concern warring with each other on her face. He flinched at her touch, fearing what he would see in her eyes – what he had seen in everyone's eyes this past year: hatred, condemnation, judgment – no more than he deserved. But tears flooded her eyes, and she patted him gently on the cheek. "It's so good to see you awake, Professor. I'll go get Potter."

"No!" He suddenly panicked for a different reason. He did not want to see Potter, did not want to face that condemnation.

"He'll want to know, Professor. He's just gone to lunch. I promised I would let him know if you woke up."

"No – I… I… have to use the loo," he stammered, his heart beating fierce protest against facing Potter awake, though some part of him remembered the boy at his bedside. He frowned in confusion, trying to make sense of it. He must hate me.

Madam Pomfrey shook her head then patted him again. "I'll just get the bed pan." He was nearly too weak for embarrassment – nearly. The healer helped him perform a bodily function he'd independently managed since his Muggle father shamed him at two, and he had nearly enough energy to feel that shame anew. But once they were done, he fell back against his pillows, trembling from the effort, raising a shaking hand to wipe sweat from his upper lip, then lowering it weakly to the blanket she pulled up and tucked around him.

"How long?" he rasped out.

She pretended not to hear him, busying herself folding clean cloths into the bedside table with a wave of her wand.

"How long?" he insisted, raising a hand in her direction. "Poppy…"

She gave him a disapproving sniff, then relented, her eyes kind as they met his, confusing him. She should hate me. Why doesn't she hate me?

He missed her answer.

"Pardon?"

She thought him stunned and patted his hand. "Today is June first, Severus. You've been sleeping a long time. If it weren't for Fawkes… and Potter… I don't know that we could have saved you."

"Potter?" Fawkes. He remembered Fawkes… and burning. His shiver turned into overt shaking, then to dry heaves, his body curling around the cramping in his stomach, the fear constricting his throat. "Potter… oh Merlin, Potter! I killed him… Oh gods, I'm sorry..."

"What? Professor? Severus! Stop! Stop this – you didn't... He's alive. Potter's alive, Severus, he'll be right back. There, there – it's all right, it's all right." Poppy's voice shifted from frantic concern to soft reassurance.

"Professor? Madam Pomfrey! What's happened? What's wrong?"

Snape was too far into his waking nightmare now. The familiar voice, rather than reassuring him, only fed his fears. "Potter… oh my God… Potter…"

"What is it, Professor?" Small hands took him by the shoulders, tried to straighten him from around his cramped stomach and the fear clenching his chest. "It's all right, Professor. It's all right. It's over… he's gone…" Madam Pomfrey hissed disapproval in the background.

"No!" the distraught man choked, sobbing, and then darkness overtook him, and he was dragged, clawing, down into a nightmare where Voldemort stood over the boy, his cruelly laughing mouth morphing into the vilely articulating jaws of the great hissing snake, striking down at the boy as he, himself, ordered Dinner, Nagini, while the boy sought to reassure him that It's all right, Professor. It's all right...

Snape moved restlessly, bothered by the quiet, his pulse speeding up as the lack of… context… threatened to drag him down into another nightmare. He resisted.

The voices of students talking quietly, sometimes laughing softly, had nearly brought him awake earlier… the same day, he thought, though he vaguely remembered too many of those for it to have been one event. He had recognized some of the voices, more recent in his memory: Seamus Finnigan, Neville Longbottom – apparently back at school despite the Carrows… Fool boy! then the more distantly recalled voice of the youngest Weasley boy… and his brother Bill… Hermione Granger's lighter laugh and sharper, knowing tone… Something was strange here… Luna Lovegood's softer, more musical voice… When had she…? And Potter's.

Each time the young wizards' voices joined in conversation or laughter, he fell back asleep, his lips twitching, dreaming of Potions lessons… Longbottom and Finnigan's cauldron exploding, sending bubotuber pus flying at their classmates – repeatedly; Granger's insufferable efforts to prove herself worthy of the name "witch", ignorantly feeling inferior due to her Muggle origins; Bill's irrepressible laughter at the sticky mess in a classmate's vial; the Lovegood girl's ludicrous claims about her father's ridiculous brews…

And Potter – Snape vanishing a perfectly good potion from his cauldron, taking satisfaction at the look of helpless fury on the boy's face; catching the boy outside his store cupboard, denying his theft of Polyjuice potion ingredients; the boy ducking behind Weasley's cauldron, their heads together, no doubt plotting some midnight foray through the castle… Risky. Slughorn's ridiculous claim that the boy was a potions genius, just like his mother… Lily… oh Merlin, Lily… Her eyes faded into the brilliant green eyes of a dark haired boy with a lightning scar under his fringe, twinkling in mischief or delight, not knowing or caring that the dark-haired man watched from afar…

The boy was rubbing his scar as he read, one finger repeatedly tracking its jagged outline down, then up to where it met his hairline. Snape watched, hypnotized, gradually coming awake.

"Potter," he whispered.

The boy looked at him, green eyes taking a moment to refocus.

"Potter," Snape repeated, more strongly, though rasping.

"Professor… do you need anything?" The boy sat up.

Snape tried to unstick his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. He had no saliva with which to wet his lips or swallow. "Water," he mouthed soundlessly, wondering why that made the boy blanch and freeze.

The boy shook himself, stood and placed his book on the chair he'd been occupying. Snape's eyes followed him as he poured water from a stoneware pitcher from somewhere behind Snape's head. He set the cup of water tantalizingly out of reach, and Snape glared at him blackly, making to raise his hand. The boy clucked at him – clucked at him!

"Hold on, Professor. Let me help you sit up."

"I'm perfectly capable…" he croaked, but Potter had already waved his wand to raise the head of the bed to a better angle for drinking, the increasing pressure on Snape's buttocks uncomfortable and unfamiliar, as if he were sitting on rocks rather than in a bed. The boy held the cup of water to his lips. Snape glared at him over the cup's rim, but the boy held his ground. He sipped – once, twice, then the boy pulled the cup away, despite his half-sounded protest. He'll pay for that… he promised himself.

He raised a hand to draw the cup back toward him, but his movement was arrested when his gaze met the skeletal thing attached to the end of his arm. He held it up, studying it as if it were some particularly noxious result of one of Hagrid's breeding experiments, or Potter's Potions homework. Twin tracks of nearly-healed puncture wounds led from the base of the fingers across the wrist, down under the black cotton pajamas he suddenly realized he was wearing. He recognized the tell-tale stain of essence of dittany. When he saw the boy watching him, he pressed his lips closed, swallowed, and dropped his hand.

"What day is it?"

"Saturday."

"The date, Potter, the date," he rasped in an attempt at his usual nasal sneer. It came out peevish. He hated that.

"June 6th, Professor," Harry said, maintaining eye contact. Snape broke it off before the boy did. Damn him.

He performed a swift calculation. "Five weeks."

The boy said nothing.

"What's… what's happening?" he asked finally, hating that it was Potter he was asking. Where is everyone? His mind shied away from that.

The boy sighed and scrubbed at his face with both hands. He looked… washed out. But he's alive.

"What do you remember, Professor?"

Snape watched the boy place the book he had been reading on the stack at the back of the nightstand, not meeting Snape's gaze now. "That your pronunciation leaves much to be desired," Snape managed dryly. The boy's mouth twitched, but he controlled it.

"Yeah – well… it's been a while since I sat in a Potions class… I'm rusty."

"… Obviously," he drawled out slowly. That was more like it. He sounded himself.

The boy turned away, but not before Snape caught the flash of a smirk on his face – Back to normal, are we? – thenturned back, having mastered himself.

"Can I get you something? Are you hungry?"

Snape looked at him, aware that his face had gone blank and still, his mind a whirl of confusion, trying to piece it together… trying to remember…

"Professor?"

"What are you doing here?"

"What…?"

"Why are you here, Potter, staring at me like I'm one of Luna Lovegood's crumple-horned snorkacks?"

"Uh…"

"Eloquent as always, aren't we, Potter?"

Potter shook his head; a surge of emotion washed across his face and he clearly fought down a flash of anger. Snape felt a curl at his lip. Ah – there we are, Potter. Back to normal. But the boy merely inhaled and repeated, "Can I get you something? Are…"

Before he could finish, the doors to the ward opened, and Minerva McGonagall strode briskly in, her robe billowing behind her, levitating a tray with what was evidently the boy's lunch on it. When she saw Snape sitting up – albeit leaning palely against his pillows, his sunken black eyes turned toward the sound of her entry – her concentration faltered, and the tray crashed to the ground.

"Severus!" she cried in a cracked, shrill exclamation, not at all like her usual dry tones… not at all like the hate that dripped from her voice when she was forced to address him lately. She stepped toward them, one foot slipping on a sandwich, and would have taken a nasty spill had the boy not whipped out his wand, twirled it expertly and produced a cushioning charm. Snape's left eyebrow shot up in appreciation, which he quickly quelled.

"Professor!" Potter raced to help McGonagall up, and with a wave of his wand – nonverbal, Snape categorized – reconstructed the tray and lofted it to a spare bedside table.

"Thank you, Potter," McGonagall said, giving the boy's cheek a pat. Something twisted inside of Snape as he watched that interaction, and he made a sound of disgust, which both Potter and Minerva ignored.

"Severus…" McGonagall reached him and raised her hand. He… flinched. Their last interaction had resulting in him fleeing the castle, her "COWARD!" shrieked at his back, penetrating with a pain as deadly as Bellatrix's icy athame.

The woman… patted his shoulder, his arm, and went to lay her hand on his head, caught herself at his look of horror, and laid the back of her hand against his forehead.

"Well," she said hoarsely, "there's no fever. That's… that's good." She tried for her usual businesslike manner. Snape's insides were a confused babble of something like fear, swiftly passing through confusion, rejection, annoyance, and finally embarrassment as he saw Potter looking on, apparently torn between amusement and sympathy. Finally, he managed to settle his face on something like his familiar, cool haughtiness, and he regarded the Deputy Headmistress as if he could look down his considerable nose at her. "Minerva…" he growled, but something in him warmed at the way she looked at him… looked at him… He hadn't been looked at – hadn'tmet Minerva's eyes – in over a year. He fought against a sudden wetness in his eyes, scowled, and settled for glaring at Potter.

McGonagall continued to pat his arm, seemingly without awareness. Snape did not pull away, too exhausted, too weak… and unwilling, he realized.

"Potter…" McGonagall turned toward the boy.

"I… I'll just go eat in the Great Hall, Professor," he said, raising his wand to levitate the tray of flattened food toward the doors.

McGonagall looked at the boy appraisingly, her nostrils flaring slightly. She sniffed. "See that you do, Potter. Oh – and tell Poppy the Headmaster is awake, will you?" She paused. "You may return, Potter – AFTER you nap… in your BED. Do you understand me, Mr. Potter?"

"There's no need…" Snape began.

"Hush," McGonagall said, patting him again as if he were a child she was soothing.

Snape caught Potter's look – a tired but insolent grin – as he started out of the room.

"And Potter – let's just keep this quiet, for the moment, shall we? We don't need people galloping up here like a herd of headless hippogriffs." The boy waved a hand in acknowledgement and, still smiling, headed out the door, leaving Snape alone with the hawk-faced, tartan-robed woman, some twenty-plus years his senior, her "Coward!" echoing over and over in his memory. He swallowed and straightened his thin shoulders as best he could in his condition, and turned to face her. I'd have preferred the boy.

Snape rested, his eyes closed, his thoughts drifting rather aimlessly, an unwanted effect of the sleeping potion Poppy had tried to dose him with before his educated nose had detected the tell-tale ingredients of lavender and valerian, one sip into the pumpkin juice with which she had attempted to disguise it. He should have caught it earlier. He had handed it back to her.

"Plain pumpkin juice, Poppy. Please."

She had opened her mouth to argue, clearly believing that his interview with Minerva had exhausted him, and he had attempted to intimidate her with a glare. He used to be able to get people to cooperate… She had pursed her lips in an attempt not to smile – cheeky woman – and Banished the tainted juice, substituting a cold, fresh – "and unmedicated, I promise" – glass, from which, it having passed the sniff test, he cautiously sipped, rolling the juice around on his tongue, testing for the subtle tell-tale aftertastes of more devious concoctions. Poppy had sniffed in mock outrage, patted his hand, which he resisted pulling away, and, nose in the air, headed to her office. If he turned his head, he could see her working, a Quick Quotes Quill recording her notes.

The door to the ward opened and light steps drew closer. He slit open his eyes, long lashes shading the black glitter, and stifled a sigh. Potter. The boy raised a hand, apparently in acknowledgement of a sign from Poppy – her door closed softly a moment later, leaving the two of them alone – and took up his place in the chair on Snape's left, reaching first to retrieve the book whose Latinate he had been butchering that morning. Snape let his eyes drift completely shut, not fully taking notice that the tension he'd felt since Potter left the ward earlier had just drained away. Perhaps he would sleep.

Chapter 3 of 30. To be continued...