Chapter 4 : A Terrible Night at the Burrow

It was spring. Everything was bright and alive after the long, particularly harsh winter.

And Severus still did not know what he could do.

"Why do magic pictures move?"

The boy was sitting in the center of the mattress, eating warm buttered toast and staring at Lily's photograph on the wall.

"Because they're magic," Severus said. That was the only explanation he could think of, though he knew how it was done, of course.

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "Yes. They wouldn't be magic if they didn't move. Then they would be just like any other pictures."

Severus stood up. "I cannot stay longer."

Large green eyes gazed up at him just like always, looking too serious. "Will you come back?"

"Yes. I will come back."

But how many more times? Until the boy started school? That time was nearly six years away.

"Will you bring me a chocolate frog?"

"I will."

He left the house and Apparated to the edge of the wards. There, he paused to breathe the fragrant night air.

He couldn't do this for the next six years. He couldn't think that Albus wouldn't notice. It was a risk every time he went to Privet Drive.

"Out for a midnight stroll, Severus?"

He jumped and whirled around, his heart pounding. For a terrible moment he completely lost all reason, his eyes darting from the werewolf to the half-full moon in the sky with the kind of incomprehension born of utter terror.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to sneak up on you."

His breath was coming out in sharp gasps. "What are you doing here?"

"Out for a midnight stroll," Lupin replied maddeningly. He looked up at the moon and stared at it for a while. "It's lovely tonight."

For just one moment, Severus wished it was a full moon, and he could hex the bastard where he stood. Lupin had very clearly sneaked up on him on purpose. Clearly.

In complete silence, they walked together toward the castle. There was not much choice in the matter.

"Just one moment."

They had reached the castle door and he had been about to stalk off to the safety of the dungeons. He paused with his wand out and almost touching the ancient lock.

When he didn't turn around, Lupin sighed. "I am sorry, Severus. It would have been impossible not to let you know I was there, and I rather figured you would hex first and ask questions later if you noticed someone following you silently up the road."

He didn't deign this worthy of a reply. After a few moments of silence, Lupin seemed to understand that.

"I'm only here to pass on a message to the nurse, and then I will be gone. You need not worry."

"I was not worried," Severus snapped, barely holding on to his temper. He turned to face Lupin reluctantly. "The nurse isn't here."

Lupin frowned. "Do you know when she might be back?"

"I don't."

Lupin continued to frown.

"Well? What is it?" Severus asked impatiently. Lupin was wasting his time. He wanted to get a few hours of sleep before he had to get up for his first class, and the night was half over already.

"One of Molly and Arthur's children has fallen ill. They couldn't get a response from St. Mungo's, and he wasn't well enough to travel. They tried to firecall, but..."

"Albus is out and Hogwarts is off the floo network tonight, yes," Severus finished. He gritted his teeth.

"I suppose I will go ask Minerva...." Lupin looked a bit lost.

"Oh," Severus spat savagely, "don't bother!"

With that, he spun around and started walking back to the nearest Apparition point.

It was not long before he heard Lupin's steps catch up and slow down behind him. "Where are you going?"

"Where do you think?"

"But... you're not a healer."

"Shut up, Lupin." What did Lupin know about it? With the nurse gone and St. Mungo's not responding -- Severus thought suddenly that Albus's rapid exit that evening might be connected -- he was the one Minerva would have sent out to the Burrow anyway. He figured he had just saved himself a quarter hour of time that would have been taken up by unnecessary explanations, and saved Minerva from being woken up at two in the morning. Not that anyone would ever thank him. "And don't follow me."

If Lupin replied, Severus did not know it. He reached the edge of the wards and Apparated.

There were wards around the Burrow, too, and he found himself stalking through a field of tall grass, barely able to see above it.

"Wait, Severus."

He couldn't see Lupin, but he could hear him thrashing through the grass somewhere off to the left. "I told you not to follow me."

He distinctly heard Lupin sigh.

The house appeared quite suddenly in front of him. He supposed he had not been paying attention.

It was lit up like a holiday tree. It seemed that every window was flooded with light. A bit of dread stirred in his stomach. How badly ill was the child? Lupin was right, he was not a healer.

The door was thrown open almost before he knocked. It was the eldest child, Bill, who stood in the doorway. He took one look at his Potions professor and took off running, yelling for his father. The sight of him made Severus feel decidedly worse. Clearly it was bad if the Weasleys had brought their children home from Hogwarts.

Within moments, Arthur came hurrying down the narrow stairs. His hair was untidy and his eyes dark rimmed.

Severus stood silently in the doorway. He knew the Weasleys from a handful of Order meetings, and he taught their two eldest children, but that was all he could say about it.

"I could not get the nurse," Lupin said, appearing without warning at his side. It was disconcerting that Severus was feeling sudden gratitude for his presence. "Albus is away."

Severus could see Arthur sizing him up. He held his head a little higher.

"My son is ill. Can you help him?"

"I will try."

"Are you a healer?"

"No." He suddenly felt that that was inadequate. "But I do have experience and some training."

That was overstating matters by quite a stretch.

"Come upstairs," Arthur said. Severus reckoned it was only a parent's desperation that was gaining him entry. "It's Percy who is ill."

It seemed as though dozens of small red-headed children were peering at him from doorways, though Severus knew quite well that the Weasley household consisted of only seven children.

In a cramped bedroom into which he was led, Molly sat next to a bed, stroking back damp hair off a young boy's brow, completely unconscious of the tears streaming down her face. Severus searched his memory but found he did not know how old the child was. Older than the Potter brat, he guessed, and not old enough for Hogwarts.

Molly looked up at him. Unlike Arthur, she neither sized him up nor questioned him, but only looked at him with pleading eyes.

He approached the bed, aware now of a terrible sound filling the small room. The sound of someone unable to draw enough air into his lungs.

"How long has he been like this?"

"He woke with a fever yesterday." It was Arthur who answered. Molly covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a sob. "We kept him in bed, but by nightfall he was having difficulty breathing, and we tried to contact St. Mungo's."

Severus pushed aside the quilt.

He snatched his hand back quickly as something furry scrambled to find new cover.

"I'm sorry," Molly said, sniffling. "That's Percy's rat. He begged to have it near, when he was still able to speak to us."

Severus refrained from commenting. He shoved the rat aside and unbuttoned the boy's shirt. The small chest rose too rapidly and too shallowly. The sound coming from inside was a far worse sign than his gasping breaths.

"Could he have ingested something?"

"Percy? No. If it were any of the others...."

He took out his wand, aware of Arthur still looking at him warily, and waved it over the boy. He would start simply.

Three more spells followed the first, and he frowned as he reached the last. There were many diagnostic spells. He only knew these four.

"I cannot find what precisely is wrong with him," he admitted. "I can treat the symptoms, and that will buy time. I will need some things." When they did not object, as he had half expected them to, he listed what he would need.

Molly stood up shakily. "I will get the water and the bowls. Dear?"

"I will get the rest," Arthur said. He looked at Severus and then at his son. "Wait a moment, Molly."

Severus tried to ignore the whispers in the hallway. He could guess quite readily what they meant, and was entirely unsurprised when Lupin appeared in the doorway, come to watch over the Death Eater.

"Go ahead, Molly," Lupin said pleasantly.

She left, and Lupin approached him, though he said nothing. They were both aware of why he was there, and there was nothing that needed to be said.

Still, it did rub like sandpaper over a sore spot. Lupin, too, was a monster, after all, and Severus didn't think the Weasleys knew Lupin that much better than they knew him.

"Here, Lupin, be useful, at least," he said irritably, shoving the rat, which had attempted to crawl under the quilt again, into Lupin's hands. He turned back to the boy without bothering to see if Lupin had dropped it in surprise. "Take this dirty thing away. I've half made up my mind that it's to blame. Filthy common garden vermin. It isn't even magical."

Lupin said absolutely nothing, which was fine with Severus. He had summoned three potions and was trying to recall if he had moved the fever reducer to the fourth shelf, or if it was still on the bottom shelf because he'd needed room on the fourth for the Dreamless Sleep.

"Severus."

Lupin's voice had been so low and odd that Severus paused for a moment before turning to look at him.

He blinked, his mouth shutting over the sneering remark he had been about to make.

Lupin stood in exactly the same spot as before, his face ashen and twisted in pain. The rat was clenched so tightly in his hand that his knuckles were white. And it was gnawing... it was gnawing on his other hand, writhing and biting, and blood dripped down his wrist and soaked his sleeve and dripped from his elbow onto the floor.

"Would you like me to hex it?" Severus asked in what he hoped was an appropriately sarcastic tone, when he had recovered himself. His opinion of Lupin dropped another notch, which he wouldn't have thought possible. What kind of idiot stood there, making absolutely no noise, with a rat reducing his fingers to bloody tatters, rather than flinging it against the nearest wall and following up with an appropriate curse?

"Severus," Lupin repeated. Speaking seemed to be a great effort. "I will test your potion. I will do whatever you want me to do. If you help me with something."

Severus stared at him. Perhaps he was being uncharitable. Maybe Lupin was in shock. "Would that something have to do with you about to lose the use of your thumb?"

Lupin winced, but somehow his strange, entirely inappropriate composure remained in place. "I need a vessel of some kind. A box. Anything. Heavily warded. Unbreakable. Nothing should be able to get out."

There was a rasping sound from the bed, and Severus looked down quickly at the child he had momentarily forgotten. He didn't have time for whatever stupidity Lupin was up to. With a wave of his wand, he summoned a container he commonly used to contain pixies, when he needed their wings. The rat, which did not even look magical, had no chance of escaping it. He reckoned nothing much did.

"Is it unbreakable?"

"Unbreakable, spell-proof, sound-proof, and every other kind of proof there is," Severus said shortly, not appreciating at all the way Lupin was wasting his time. Over a rat, for Merlin's sake.

"Can you spell it in?"

With an exaggerated sigh, Severus flicked his wand at the rat, and the next moment it was writhing in terror at the bottom of the container, quite helpless.

"Thank you," Lupin breathed, sinking down into the chair Molly had previously sat in. He held his bleeding hand against his chest, but his other hand stretched out towards the container. "May I have it?"

"Help yourself." Severus shoved the container at him. Despite telling himself he absolutely did not care, he watched out of the corner of his eyes as Lupin shrunk it and pocketed it.

He turned his attention back to the boy at last, and looked him over carefully for any change, but the boy was not remarkably worse than before.

He looked at Lupin again. "Are you planning on bleeding to death?" he inquired in an overly curious tone. In truth, he was slightly alarmed by the sight of Lupin's mangled hand and the amount of blood pooling on the floor.

Lupin winced. His eyes were looking a bit glazed.

With a sigh that needed no exaggeration, Severus summoned bandages and a blood replenisher.

A few minutes later when Molly and Arthur returned, Lupin was more or less patched up, his hand bandaged thickly.

Molly yelped when she saw the blood, while Arthur stopped short, his eyes darting from Lupin to the blood and then, maddeningly, to Severus.

"Molly, Arthur, I'm terribly sorry. It was entirely my fault," Lupin said in a tone that was so pathetically apologetic that it made Severus a little sick to his stomach. "Percy's rat... it bit me. I'm... I'm terribly sorry." He made a useless sort of gesture with his uninjured hand.

Fortunately for Lupin, neither Molly or Arthur cared what had happened beyond that it had not happened to their child. And, Severus supposed bitterly, that it had not been done by the Death Eater.

He studied Lupin's face out of the corner of his eyes. He didn't care one whit what Lupin was up to, he decided. He just wished Lupin would be up to it somewhere else, instead of getting in his way.

"I gave him two potions," he said to Molly and Arthur. "There's no change. If you will mix this salve into hot water, we will attempt to relieve the congestion in his chest. This bowl will do. We will need some cloths about the size of a handkerchief."

Next came two more potions, the powdered bezoar, then the aloe and thyme, and finally, just as he was feeling rather desperate, it was the nightshade that did it.

Molly sobbed quietly into Arthur's sleeve. There was silence now in the bedroom, aside from that. Severus stood off to the side with his arms folded over his chest. Lupin was still slumped in the chair, his eyes half closed.

He let a quarter hour go by before he felt his duty had been done, or at least that he had done all he could and if the boy took a turn for the worse now he wouldn't have an inkling of what else to try.

"I will leave this restorative. Give him a spoonful every hour, with water." He moved toward the door. "If the nurse returns before Hogwarts is back on the floo network, I will send her."

He was half-way through the doorway, eager now to leave.

"Thank you." It was Arthur's voice. Molly was still sobbing.

Severus froze for a moment, and because he hadn't been expecting it, his only response was a kind of twitchy shrug.

There was the grass field again. He didn't even remember how he got outside.

But of course Lupin caught up with him before he could reach the edge of the wards. Panting slightly, he fell into step beside Severus. "You saved that child, Severus."

He didn't think that was worth more than a grunt, so that was his reply.

"And you helped me," Lupin continued. He never had been good at taking a hint. "Thank you. I mean it. I owe you."

Severus, given that it had to be close to morning now and he still had not slept, and that it had been a very long and stressful night and was going to be a long and stressful day, too, was fed up enough that he stopped dead in his tracks. "Lupin. For the very last time, stop using my name like we're some sort of old school chums, stop following me, and, for the love of Merlin, JUST STAY AWAY FROM ME."

Leaving Lupin behind, he stomped the rest of the way to the edge of the wards.

He was stomping up the road toward the school by the time he felt slightly sorry that he hadn't taken Lupin up on the offer to test his potion. Where else was he supposed to find a werewolf who would willingly take it, and one he didn't mind accidentally poisoning?