Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Chapter 10

All was lost, and Severus knew it as surely as he knew he was dying.

Potter didn't know. He hadn't been able to pass on Albus' final message to the boy.

He had been taking a variation of the antivenin that had saved Arthur Weasley, modified for long-term use, for over a year. The potion was working - if it hadn't, he'd have mercifully lost consciousness for the last time by now.

But the venom wasn't what was killing him.

It was the blood loss.

Multiple bite locations, and the two his hands had drifted to were wet enough that he was sure they were enough to kill on their own.

He closed his eyes and tried to occlude away the pain, fear, and shame.

He had failed.

Small hands shook a shoulder. "Time for Master's potion," Winky told him. "'Tis nearly six o'clock."

The pain from the bites on his body had disappeared when he woke, nothing more than a very tangible memory.

The pain at his throat had actually intensified, with no shock to insulate his mind from it now.

For the first time since the second time he woke in the Hospital Wing, Severus was truly terrified.

Six o'clock. Numbing potion, not the full painkiller.

"get help" he signed.

"Master means Madam Poppy?"

"yes"

Winky popped away.

She was back a moment later. "Madam Poppy is coming, Sir."

He grasped handfuls of the sheets in his hands and closed his eyes.

Winky was gone and back in a moment, and then there was a wet cloth on his face, dabbing at him.

He opened his eyes and tried to flash his gratitude to her through them before letting his eyelids close again.

It was a marvelous focus for occlusion.

He heard the Floo in his sitting room whoosh.

The sitting room his best friend's orphan son was currently in hour four or five of a six-hour drugged sleep in.

Damn.

Rushed steps on the stairs.

"Severus Snape, what is Harry Potter doing on your sofa!"

He forced himself to untangle his hands. "sleeping"

"I could see that," she bit out as she cast some diagnostic spells. "You've been talking."

I couldn't avoid it!

"Too much, too early. And were you hiding your pain levels when you left my care again?"

He couldn't hide it from her.

He could never hide it from here, not once she'd caught him at it.

At least it was a reaction that couldn't have killed him in the Dark Lord's service.

Winky was still attending to his brow when Poppy started giving him potions.

A pain potion first, then less familiar healing potinos.

He tried to say "thank you" but couldn't.

Severus glared at her.

"It's just a simple healing paralysis, Severus. It will start wearing off in two days. It shouldn't interfere with breathing, drinking, or eating."

She passed him a Muggle pad of paper and a Muggle ballpoint.

"Potter was looking for where Lily grew up, but everything has changed and her neighborhood is gone now. He got lost and managed to miss the last train back to London. He couldn't find a place to Apparate from without Muggles seeing him do it, and ended up wandering down my street. The Muggles know he's here, Lily's son, and that I'm supposed to bring him to the train station today."

"You're in no state for it." Her flat voice left no room for argument.

Severus knew how to read her in full healer mode from very long practice.

It was nearly comforting to have company he didn't have to strain to fully understand without magical aid.

"Then we need a cover story for him lingering. I don't obliviate my neighbors if I can help it."

"You could just draw him a map," she suggested. "He is an adult."

To us, Severus thought. And on the battlefield.

But not to the Muggles. Not until the end of July.

And with the Dark Lord dead and most of the Death Eaters either slain or in Azkaban, Potter had clearly been viewed as Out of Danger even by his spell-shocked self

"I promised him!" he wrote, leaving everything else out. He had to show Potter what bits of Lily's life were left before the younger wizard departed Cokeworth.

Poppy occupied her hands setting out later doses of the potions. "And he can't just disappear?"

"no!"

She flinched.

"Scandal, years ago." He wrote quickly, trusting that even failed grammar would be good enough. "Teacher, at the state primary school. He's still in prison."

Poppy blanched.

"Everyone in the area is still on alert, because there were missed signs something was very wrong. They know I'm headmaster now. If Potter were younger or the relationship more distant I wouldn't have dared. But the Muggles remember Lily."

Poppy nodded. "We need a plan, then."

He thought for a moment. "Not until Potter can help decide what we do."

There were, after all, ways of getting him out of Cokeworth anyway, mainly by having someone like Arthur Weasley show up by completely Muggle means and escort Potter elsewhere. And, given the events of the previous night, there were reasons Potter might even want to stay if it meant more information about his mother or a better idea of what their private Potions lessons might look like once term began again.

He deserves a chance to decide for himself just where he spends his readjustment to the everyday world.

Severus heard Winky wring out the cloth.

Poppy patted his shoulder. "Rest for now, then." But then she asked, "Why did you drug him, anyway?"

"Nightmare. Bad one. I decided to show a bit of mercy. He has another hour, maybe two."

He set the pen down with as much finality as he could muster, knowing the rest was his and Potter's business and only their business.

And besides, Poppy didn't need to know that they had been wrong for so many years about just how much a one-year-old babe could remember.