Title: The Sketchbook, the grump and the wheelchair
Written for: meeee
Ratings and Warnings: Mentions of genitalia, also strong language at times
Word Count: Around 33k all together
Summary: The Boy Who Lived had grown up to be The Man Who Lived in a Wheelchair, and although he's quite happy with a life of solitude and sketching - everyone else seem to think they know better. Will the reappearance of Professor Severus Snape in his life change things for the better, or will it end in aggravation like always?
Author notes: Last chapter is tomorrow! O: The journey is almost over T_T Thanks to everyone who's been reading along, I've really appreciated all the feedback and company.
THIS WORLD AND ITS CHARACTERS ARE NOT MY PROPERTY AND I MAKE NO MONEY FROM THEM. I JUST LOVE THEM AND ALSO WANT THEM TO LOVE EACH OTHER*
He was stuck in bed for another two days, and was not allowed the sketchbook until then either. Not that he'd been able to stay awake for long enough periods to make good use of it. He simply sat or lay in the corner of the workroom, where Snape could keep an eye on him night and day, and watched the man brew. He supposed he should call him Severus, now that he was 'Harry' again. He kept meaning to try, but there wasn't much cause for saying the name when he was the only other person around. Who else could Harry possibly be talking to?
To top it off, they weren't talking all that much anyway. There was nothing uncivil between them, no ill feelings. It was simply that whatever ease that had existed in weeks prior had drained away, leaving in its place an uncomfortable tension. He didn't know what to say, or how to say it. Should he apologise for not telling Snape about the charms sooner?
Then there was Hermione. Unlike with Snape, he knew exactly what he would say to her. He'd come up with several rants in his head, taken the best of each and reworked them into what he thought of as the mega rant. She'd learn never to meddle in his life again, that was for sure. So far though, he hadn't worked up enough of whatever emotion he needed, to want to see her again. She'd sent notes, which he'd had Snape burn without reading, and he'd totally blocked the floo so that not even Molly Weasley could get through.
"How is your arm?"
That's all they talked about now. His health, his appetite, did he need anything… No rock n roll cocaine stories. "Fine," he snapped, then grimaced. What was he being so annoyed about? He moderated his tone. "It's feeling stronger. Easier to lift, but I'm still having trouble with fine movements." He held up said arm to demonstrate, slowly clenching and unclenching his fingers. The pinky and ring fingers in particular were so stiff that they barely moved at all.
Snape took his hand, something which had become normal between them now. Contact. He gently pressed the stubborn fingers inwards until they touched the palm. "Does it hurt?" He asked. Harry shook his head. "Good. I'll fetch your chair. You'll be glad to hear that I'm declaring you fit enough to eat lunch in the dining room."
Lunch was ham sandwiches, a welcome reprieve from the endless onslaught of soups for breakfast, lunch and dinner that Harry had been suffering through so far. He was halfway through his first when Snape told him that he was allowed to use magic again. "You're kidding," he said, dropping the food onto his plate.
"I assure you that I am not the type to kid," Snape replied. He slid Harry's wand across the table to him.
Harry grinned and snatched it up, only to put it away in his caddy and cast wandlessly. Oh, it felt good. He recast the wheelchair charms he had been missing, enunciating the spells so quickly one after the other that it sounded almost like a chant. Then he set the teapot train going and accio'd a sketchbook, pencils and a carton of cigarettes. He lit one with an unnecessarily large flame, and finally sat back. Dear Merlin, he already felt ten million times less cold without the heat sink of his uncharmed legs.
When he was finished, Snape pushed the plate of sandwiches towards him. "What were those charms, leniter cali-something? Pernix? I've never encountered them before."
Oh, shit. He'd put his foot in it now. Well, not that it mattered - Snape was leaving in a few days, anyway. "Just ease of life stuff," he said casually, opening the sketchbook to a new page and making a show of choosing the correct pencil. "Warming for the legs, anti-collision charms, lightness on the chair so it's not so hard to push around. Stuff like that."
"You-" Snape cut himself off and took a few long seconds. Harry glanced up long enough to see a throbbing vein in the man's forehead, and ducked his own head low. "I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how much of an utter imbecile you have been, and I will accept some degree of the same for myself for not searching out that information before vetoing all magic. Let it be known however, that I am very displeased."
Huh, New Snape was so much harder to rile up than old Snape. "Yeah, it was pretty inconsiderate of you, if I'm honest," Harry said. "If you want to make it up to me, there's two weeks' worth of piss-soaked bed sheets in the shed, if you fancy popping them in the wash."
It wasn't that he was trying to make the man angry, exactly. Just that… It would be easier to say goodbye. Everything would be easier if it was just Old Snape, and they'd spent the entire time arguing and shouting, and throwing books at each other. It would be easier to see him go.
But this wasn't Old Snape. It was… Severus. So there was no angry reply, only a huff and then the sound of tea being poured.
He had meant to keep drawing for a few hours, but it quickly became apparent that he wouldn't be staying awake that long. After nodding off briefly a few times in his chair, Sn-everus insisted on sending him back to bed.
Another couple of days rolled by, with Harry almost back to his old self - if not in strength, then in occupancy with his sketchbook and a certain potions master. It was easier to talk, now that he had the book again, his shield from awkwardness.
"Will you be going right back to Hogwarts?" He asked. There were only a couple of months left to the school year anyway. Well, three or four. It was odd that Severus had come during term time anyway, but it made sense that he hadn't waited for Summer, considering Hermione's plans. He had to be well enough to storm Ginny's wedding, after all.
For once, Severus was reading instead of brewing. His eyes sped back and forth across the page for a minute, and Harry smiled at the thought that he was rushing through the page for him. Finally, he looked up. "Hogwarts?"
"To teach," Harry clarified. "Are you going straight back, or did you take the whole term off?"
Severus bookmarked his page with a long black-plumed quill, and set the book on a worktop. "I had planned on returning in September," he said. "But I have become something of a pariah within the community of late, and considering what has been published about me recently I think even Minerva will have a time reinstating me."
Harry sat up straighter, outraged. "But we exonerated you. The mark is gone, there's no more Death Eaters," he argued. Why did the Daily Prophet and bloody Witch Weekly have to keep dragging this stuff out? Couldn't everyone just move on?
Severus sighed. "Not that, Harry, although I will admit that my dark history has contributed somewhat." He paused, clearly uncertain, then waved a hand in the air. "It's this, actually. You. Us."
"Us?" Harry replied weakly. Was there an us, a something with - between - them? A Harry and Severus?
"Half of wizarding Britain thinks that I reignited or recast the curse on you as revenge for the death of my master," he explained. "And the other half either thinks that I've killed you or that you've been dead for years anyway, and this is all a ruse for who-knows-what purpose. An atrocious notion, but there have been numerous articles and exposés over the years declaring the hidden truth about you. You've died of everything from the common cold to dragon fire and-"
"But you've been helping me," Harry said, dropping his sketchbook carelessly into the caddy. The pencil missed, bounced and went skittering across the floor. "If it wasn't for you I'd be dead or paralysed."
Severus bent to pick up the pencil and held it in his lap, twirled it in his fingers. Fiddling was the word Harry might have used to describe it, for anyone but this man. "If it weren't for me, you would not have been placed in danger in the first place. It was nought but arrogance on my part, thinking that I could cure curse damage so many years after the fact. It is unheard of, and I put you at unnecessary risk for my own pride in solving a problem you did not need me to solve."
"Did you know it was going to fail?" Harry asked. "The treatment, I mean. Did you know it wasn't working?"
The pencil stopped twirling. "I-" Severus began, but stopped whatever he was going to say. "I suspected, but hoped that I was wrong. The blood test revealed that some residual dark magic from the curse had survived, dormant rather than dead as I had previously thought."
"Is that why you trashed the place?"
Severus looked at him in surprise. "That's... Yes, I did. I will not pretend otherwise," he said. "You must understand, I had been working on this hypothetical treatment for, well, as long as you've been in that chair. It was years of work based on the assumption that the curse had been destroyed, and from the moment that cauldron turned black I knew that none of it would work. So I began working on a new treatment, something to tackle the curse while managing and blocking the resulting symptoms, but - I thought..." He shook his head.
If Hermione were here, this would be the time she would have put a hand on his leg for comfort, but it was only Harry so they sat in silence until he could think of what to say. "Why didn't you just stop it? You could have left, I wouldn't have-" minded? cared? been disappointed? Those were lies. "thought ill of you for it."
"Pride," Severus answered easily. "I have been tasked in protecting you many a time through the years, and until now I have never failed in doing so. It was conceit on my part, and I put my own desire to- to be the one to save Harry Potter once again, above your actual safety."
Harry considered Severus for a long moment. He was a good man. Of sorts. And though Harry hadn't been the one to ask him here, he was just as responsible as Hermione for keeping him. It was only fair he should do something to help the man in return for what he'd tried to do. "And you want to go back to Hogwarts to teach?" He asked. "If you could?"
"I have scarce any choice. It is what I have always done, where I have always been." Snape replied.
You could stay here, with me.
Harry shook the words from his mind. Totally absurd, Severus Snape would never want that. Would never want him. Crazy, stupid thought.
He summoned a nice thick piece of parchment, flattened it out on the table and began writing.
To Mr Barnabas Cuffe,
On the subject of my recent demise…
No more than two hours later, Severus and Harry were sitting near the hearth, waiting for their guest.
Severus was making a good show of not being at all affected, while Harry was a bundle of nerves. "Maybe you should be standing behind me when he comes through," he said, flattening his hair with a hand for the millionth time.
Raised eyebrow. "So that you might protect me?"
"No, like - you've got my back, kind of thing. To show that I trust you." Harry pushed his chair against the other man's legs to convince him to stand. He got an irritated flicker in response, then an over-the-top sigh.
Severus creaked to his feet. "And I suppose I should place a hand on your shoulder, akin to an authoritarian father in a family portrait?"
Harry rearranged his blanket so that it fell more flat over the knees. "Ugh, no you're right. We should both be sat. Equal footing, sort of thing - I don't want anyone standing over me." He looked up. "Is this jumper okay, do you think?"
"What does it matter?" Severus asked exasperatedly, stopping mid-sitting motion to inspect said jumper. "You haven't cared what the likes of Cuffe or Skeeter think about you before now - in fact, I remember very specific words to that effect just last week." He tweaked the collar of Harry's shirt where it poked out from under the jumper, and ruffled his hair. Harry tried to duck out of it, but all his flattening was undone in a second.
"Stop that, I'm trying to look tidy - and it does matter." He swatted Severus' hands, then caught them to hold them still. Their eyes met. "I don't care for me, or what they say about me. I care about you," he said fiercely.
"That's quite the declaration, my boy."
They sprang apart at the unfamiliar voice, Severus with wand already in hand. A tidy looking man in his sixties or seventies watched them with sparkling eyes over a grand moustache. "My apologies, gentlemen," he said, half a smile tweaking his lips. "Silent floo powder, trick of the trade, albeit not a common one. Sometimes I find that arriving without notice for just a second or two allows me to capture the real story. I do hope you'll keep it a secret just between the three of us - I wouldn't want any of my contemporaries catching on."
"Good afternoon," Harry said before Severus could open his mouth and say what both of them were thinking. "You must be Mr Cuffe, Editor in Chief of the Daily Prophet."
They shook hands, though Severus kept his arms crossed. "The very same. I'll just take a seat, shall I? Won't you excuse me, Prof- ah, Mister Snape?" Without waiting on a reply, the journalist settled himself down in Severus' chair, forcing him to stand beside Harry instead. "So what's all this about you not being dead then, eh? That's been a terribly good story, I must say - but perhaps we can get a few more out of you before then, hum."
"I've heard you haven't been saying very nice things about Severus," Harry said, and called the tea train. "I don't appreciate the allegations, if I can be quite honest."
"Oh-hoh? Just the one sugar for me, if you'd be so kind. Thank you." Mr Cuffe plucked his cup from the air and took a sip. "Just lovely. I should tell you, we can't control what we sadly are forced to write. If the information and evidence points to foul play, then it is our sworn duty and masters of the press to ensure that the truth is known."
The truth. Severus sniffed in distaste, but thankfully held his tongue. They'd already been over this - Harry was the only one allowed to talk once the man got under their skin. Seeing as that had been the immediate effect of his appearance, Severus would just have to suffer in silence. "I'm glad to hear of your dedication to the truth, because if for whatever reason I thought you were less than totally dedicated to real news reporting then I'm sure you understand that I couldn't in good conscience give The Prophet this kind of exclusive interview again."
Mr Cuffe's mouth twitched. "Exclusive, ah?"
"I don't see anyone else in my sitting room."
The man smiled broadly. "Of course, well you'll find no fault with me or my paper, I assure you. Shall we begin with a few obvious questions to see what, ah, truths we can uncover, hmm?"