The Hidden War

By JalendaviLady

Timeline: A few years after "The Mistake". If you haven't read it, you will be lost.

Summary: In October 1981, Severus Snape's cover was blown, the Potters escaped, and history took a very different turn. A chance discovery is about to change the flow of events again. And just what does the Prophecy mean with no Boy Who Lived?

Characters: Severus Snape, Lily Potter, James Potter, Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, and assorted others

Pairings: James/Lily (story is not pairing-focused)

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Chapter 10: Wolfsbane

Lily Evans Potter stared at the vial in her hand.

"This can't be what I think it is, James. Tell me it isn't."

"It is," Severus piped up. "From Salazar's own."

"Where...?"

"We'll tell you later," James promised with a kiss.

She was suddenly very glad that Harry and her cat were napping in his bedroom. It meant she didn't have to explain what a basilisk was.

And that made her maternal view of the world flare up. "Please tell me it's not still around."

Averted gazes.

"We don't actually know if it still is or not," James said carefully. "But it doesn't seem able to wander on its own, so roaming the castle under control of a wizard once in the thousand years since its master left doesn't seem like the kind of track record that would put us or Harry in danger."

"And if the wizard who let it roam then returns to Hogwarts, we've got bigger problems," Severus added darkly.

She thought for a moment before standing and moving for the door. "I'm putting this in the locked ingredient cabinet in our private lab. Maybe having something closely linked to Salazar in the room will give us a bit of luck."

She marched off, and a matter of moments later she walked into their lab.

And stared.

One stasis spell and a swiftly scrawled time on their research notebook later, and she was screaming, "Severus!" into the summer stillness of the castle.

He walked in a few minutes later, followed closely by James, something very tired in his eyes.

Then, they brightened and widened. "No," he breathed.

"Yes. We'll need to test and analyze it, but..."

"What?" James asked.

"It looks and smells like the fabled potion we're trying to recreate," Lily told him. "It looks like we were over-brewing the entire time. Now, we may not have the right combination of ingredients, but if we retry some of the failed recipes we thought would work that failed with the longer brewing period..."

"This might just be the breakthrough we've been looking for," Severus finished. He took a few deep breaths, pulling a stool against the wall and sitting down. "How long do you think the stasis will hold?"

Of course, she thought with a flash of guilt. Fiendfyre. And whatever led to the venom from Salazar's basilisk. Long day.

She met James' eyes, and James nodded.

Another night on the hideaway then. It wasn't a privilege Severus used all the time, but it simply made sense for him to spend the night on the Potter side of the dual quarters when he was sick, drained, or going through a terrified emotional spell she was certain was an after-effect of extended cruciation. Otherwise, he was alone with no way for anyone to so much as check on him without entering his personal space, possibly with no chance of getting permission first.

And it didn't help that Severus simply could not go to the Hospital Wing, not unless he wanted to risk life imprisonment in St. Mungo's locked mental care ward. If he were in need of any medical care at all, he was sleeping on the hideaway for the duration with Poppy making as few housecalls as she could get away with to keep the required records as nonexistent as possible.

So the hideaway sofa he'd spent early November 1981 sleeping on was unofficially his, and the few times he'd expressed unease at the arrangement it had always been over something a quick reminder that he was considered part of the family now and family looked after family could dissipate.

Besides, no one stayed up with him unless he was having trouble with or not supposed to do any walking. Otherwise, whenever one of the Potter adults woke with the urge to check on Harry there was simply another room added to the inspection circuit.

"A few days, maybe. At least two. Long enough for you to rest." She opened the safe with combined magical and Muggle locks they used for particularly expensive or dangerous ingredients and stowed the little vial inside, tucked into the very back. "Let's get you home, Sev."

"Don't let Lupin know," Severus warned James after dinner that night, while Lily was off getting Harry ready for bed and he was settling in so that if he fell asleep while talking the Potters could just wander out quietly instead of having to wake and move him. "Not until we've found a formula worthy of human testing."

James raised an eyebrow. "Why not? He's been waiting for good news ever since you and Lily announced you'd found the flaw in Belby's methodology and were taking on the potion reconstruction yourselves. And with everything else..."

"That's the whole point. If we are wrong, or if it takes years yet, and it easily could even if we are successful..." Severus shook his head. "It's not worth getting his hopes up."

"And since when do you worry about getting a Marauder's hopes up?" James asked quietly. Even with all that had happened over the past few years, there was still a clear barrier there. Things between Sirius and Severus could still get tense incredibly fast, and James had rarely seen Remus and Severus in the same room since that harrowing Halloween.

"Since what happened was mainly you and Black, plus that rat urging you on. A working potion would mean a complete upheaval of the laws concerning werewolves. He knows it, I know it, Lily knows it. His life would change, and not just in the sense of not facing a transformation every month and coming back to himself with a few more scars." Severus leaned back, sinking further into the padding of the sofa. "It's better he just knows we're still working on it instead of being personally affected by every single failure."

James gave him a grumpy look.

"Think of it this way, Gryffindor," Severus explained with a sly look that made it all too clear that he had not only been Sorted Slytherin but had once been Head of that house, "it will not hurt him to not learn the details of our research and there is nothing he can do until we need a willing test subject. And as I intend to be much more conservative about the testing risks than he will likely want to be, the less said about our progress the better until we need him to be our test subject."

"You're actually trying to protect one of us Marauders from emotional upset?"

"Willing subjects for research into lycanthropy are rare. It's not a comfortable process for the werewolf, even if the only goal is a saliva sample. Best if he still has his hopes up when we do finally have something worth testing."

"...What does it take?" James asked, very cautiously. "I, well, I haven't read up on that. Intentionally."

Severus gave him a knowing look. "Because it's part of the darker aspects of magical life that you don't like thinking too hard about, I presume?"

James nodded, looking away. "I don't need to do it, there's no way around it without unnecessary risk to everyone involved, so why have to think about it?"

"Because I'll need you there, and so will he." Severus shifted a bit, getting more comfortable for the explanation. "He has to be bound well before the transformation in such a way that he will remain restrained after it without the change harming him. And he must stay that way until his mind's completely back, which can take hours after the physical transformation..."

"...back to fully human. I know. I've been there with him on the full moon."

"And that will need to happen once for a baseline, then once per tested formulation, and then a longer series if we find one that appears workable. The process will take at least a year, and in the summer at this latitude... It's not going to be a good experience for him."

"And he's already volunteered to let you do this to him?" James asked.

Severus nodded. "So long as we think we've got it right."

James sighed. Severus did have a point, and the less anticipation worrying Remus did, the better. "I won't tell him." He stretched. "Are you sure you're going to be all right tonight?"

"I'm drained, but I should be fine."

"I didn't mean the Fiendfyre."

Severus paused before answering. "Mum's alive. And wherever he is, he's proud of the man I've become. That's enough. It's more than I had this morning."

"You've got us, too," James reminded him quietly. "And together, we'll find all of them."

Severus smiled weakly in a way he wouldn't have a few years before and nodded with something that in better circumstances might have been not entirely unlike contentment.

"Do you think you need the sky?" James asked. "Not now, of course, but..."

"Next new moon?" Severus mumbled, eyes nearly shut.

"Next new moon."