Chapter 19
Severus clawed his way to wakefulness as memory after memory assaulted every sense – he saw people dying, frequently by his own hand, smelled their blood, felt their hearts give their last fluttering beats, heard their cries for mercy, to an end of all pain. Old stone buildings flattened, turned to nothing but mounds of rubble and the odd burning coal. A raid of a small town, a flat in London leveled for the Dark Lord's amusement.
Not all the memories were like that – in fact, some of them were pleasant, of bright summer days gathering potions ingredients just inside the Forbidden Forest, of the enticing smell of a woman who had just left his bed. Books he had read, poetry and music he had enjoyed. Dancing and fine wine, proper tea. Things that made him want to be away from this infernal prison of his own broken body. It was enough to give him a headache.
Upon jarring awake, he heard the sound of singing, and recognized Poppy's voice immediately. In fact, the bright melody was something he recognized vaguely, teasing at the edge of his memory. He looked for Poppy, but didn't see her, realizing that she was out in the infirmary proper. Moreover, the door to his room was open, and sunlight streamed in. He could smell fresh lavender, and as he inhaled deeply of it, he sneezed violently.
Poppy hurried in, her softly humming voice stilled. "Severus?" she asked worriedly, as she bustled to his side. She looked like she was going in to wipe his nose for him with a handkerchief produced from somewhere on her person. "Are you all right?"
He wiped at his nose impatiently, waving her away. "I'm fine, or I will be if you stop fussing for a moment." He didn't quite know where that surge of irritation came from, but he was embarrassed at the thought of her wiping his nose for him, and glared at her over his hooked proboscis. Despite the sneeze, his headache and his weakened body, he felt better now than he had in – entirely too long.
Poppy was not to be deterred by his manner, however, and in fact seemed to take heart from it. She helped him to sit and merely offered the cloth to him. He took it, though his hands shook terribly. He dabbed carefully at his nose as if he had only been laid up with a particularly bad cold.
"…out for a bit?"
Severus looked up sharply from his ministrations. The mediwitch had been speaking, but he had been concentrating on stilling his hands from their shaking, not listening to her.
"What?" he snapped.
"I thought that we might go out for a bit. The grounds are beautiful this time of year, and we haven't a single student summering here."
Her voice was softly placating, and as much as he wanted to rage and rail against her, he found that he could not bring himself to do it.
"Out?" he repeated. The idea of leaving this room was an attractive one. To be out of these four walls, to see something other than Poppy, Minerva and Albus. Perhaps being out of here would give him something else to think on, rather than be left with the assault of memories that were jangling in his head, reverberating around inside his skull.
"Yes, out. I think it might be good for you to get out of these walls for a little walk," she said, echoing his thoughts. "In fact, a proper bath wouldn't go amiss either, I think. Wait here – I'll draw a bath and have a house-elf fetch a dressing gown for you."
Severus would have protested his dignity, or even that he wasn't really capable of moving very far on his own, had Poppy not already swept out of the room. He had nothing to do but contemplate his immediate future. He decided, however, that if Poppy were to insist on his bathing (a prospect that, truth be known, did not entirely displease him), he would do his damnedest to meet her half way.
That in mind, and already sitting up in bed, he pushed himself forward on his weak arms. Pausing to take a deep breath, he pushed back the sheets and was dismayed by what he saw there. The muscles in his legs had atrophied from disuse, and more than that, long and deep scars ran their lengths. His knees were angular and bony, his feet as scarred as his hands, but they, like his hands, retained their proper shape. He grimaced at the sight, closed his eyes and resolutely pushed away the memories of the events that had brought him to where he was now.
Instead, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, carefully maneuvering so his feet could touch the floor. The feel of the cool stones against his feet was – indescribable, really. His eyes closed, he sat rubbing his feet against the smooth stone, feeling the small cracks between two of the closely laid stones, and was so entranced by the sensation that he didn't hear Poppy as she bustled back into his room.
"Severus!"
He couldn't tell if Poppy was upset or pleased, but either way she was at least surprised. He felt a certain amount of warm satisfaction from knowing that he had done something that caused her even consternation. She recovered quickly, as she pressed her lips into a firm, disapproving line.
"I was going to levitate you into the tub," she said. Her voice was steady and carried a reproachful tone, only matched by her raised eyebrow. Then, her voice softened. "You'll only hurt yourself if you push too hard."
Severus frowned, closed his eyes. Another memory slithered to the forefront of his mind.
He awoke in the Hospital Wing – again. Fifth time this year, and it was only November. He couldn't recall what had brought him here, and he was dismayed to discover that he had returned once again, but only for a moment. In a way, the Hospital Wing was becoming a sanctuary to him, a place where he went to recover from his injuries and ills. Madam Pomfrey bustled around the Infirmary, making notes on a scrap of parchment periodically. He was suddenly taken with a rough coughing fit, a side-effect of the hex that had been thrown at him earlier. Madam Pomfrey hurried to his side, held him up with strong arms while he voided his lungs. She smiled kindly at him, offered a handkerchief. He shook his head, refusing both the handkerchief and the offer of kindness.
"I should be getting back to my common room," he said.
"You shouldn't push yourself, Severus. You'll only hurt yourself if you do." She laid a steadying hand on his shoulder, gently pushed him back to the pillows…
The rest of the memory was lost, although it didn't end with the feeling of being fractured that so many of the others had. This one simply trailed into nothingness, as if there was naught but time that caused the end of it.
Severus looked up at Poppy, his tone softening at her stern, but worried expression. "I'm fine, Poppy. But I'd just as soon not be carried to my bath like an invalid."
She looked like she would argue, but then nodded in agreement. "All right. It's not that far, and if you lean on me, we should make it just fine." As if this settled everything, she leaned over to put an arm around his thin waist, and half lifting him, she helped him to his feet. He swayed, the change of perspective making the room spin around him.
"All right?" Poppy asked after a moment when his swaying had stopped.
"Just dizzy," he said faintly. The room had stopped making its merry way around his head, and he steadied himself against Poppy's warm form.
"Come on, then. It's not far." Soft, encouraging. He could take his strength from her manner alone.
With her kind words, the pair made their way through the open door of the private ward, carefully placing one foot in front of another. It was the first time Severus had been out of it since he had been brought back to Hogwarts. He gasped at the sight of the high ceiling, the bright light streaming through the high windows. Beds lined the walls, partitioned by curtains. It was as he remembered it. Exactly as he remembered, and he took heart from seeing it as such.
Along one wall was a longer stretch of curtained partition, and it was there that Poppy guided him. Leaning heavily against her, he raised one trembling hand to part the curtain. Behind it was a clawed tub, filled with steaming water that smelled slightly of ginger. He inhaled deeply of its scent, wafting to his nostrils on the steam.
Poppy settled him in a high-backed wooden chair and puttered for a moment, doing mysterious things with her wand and pouring strange concoctions into the tub, changing the scents ever so slightly, and allowing the steam to dwindle until it was nearly gone. Ginger mixed with citrus, a spicier scent he didn't recognize. Poppy smiled encouragingly, motioned for him to lift his arms so she could lift the shirt off. He thought for a moment to protest, but for the moment could not. The scents overwhelmed him, suffusing his senses. For a moment he fancied that he could taste the strange citrus, and sagged back in his seat.
"Up we go," Poppy said, again guiding him to his feet. She then had him sit on the edge of the tub, lifting one leg into it, then the other, and finally gently pushing the rest of his torso into the warm liquid.
He laid back against the edge of the tub, relishing the sensation of the wet liquid washing over him. The effort of moving after his prolonged confinement had left him exhausted, and for the moment he was content to allow Poppy to do what she would with him. In all of his memories, she was nothing other than safe, completely and utterly. She had never done anything to harm him, never hurt him. He couldn't say the same for Albus and Minerva, and that realization made him nervous.
Poppy left him to his thoughts, and he let them freely roam, allowing the associations to go where they would. For now, the memories that came to him were pleasant, although they frequently had an undertone of regret or pain. He started regarding them as normal, as the way they should be, for there were few others that were more pleasant, or had no such associations at all.
Before he realized it, Poppy was speaking to him again, and he realized that he had not been paying attention to a word she'd said. For a moment, he focused on her lips, the shapes they made as she formed words that held no meaning. It occurred to him, belatedly, that he should have been listening to the words, not merely watching.
"I'm sorry, Poppy. My mind was wandering. What was that?"
She gave him an unreadable look, then smiled, though even he thought it looked forced. "You're all done here. If you'll help me, we'll get you loaded into the wheelchair, and go for that walk." She nodded to a corner of the curtained area, and for the first time he noticed the awful thing. It was a contraption for invalids.
Which he was. The thought of it stung, but he had to admit it was fitting. In fact, hadn't he applied that same word to himself not long ago? He couldn't make it across the room without his breath coming in heavy, short gasps, his limbs still shook when he attempted any activity more strenuous than turning pages in a book.
He sighed, then nodded. Vile, terrible contraption, he thought. High-backed and wicker, it was a relic from a bygone age, charmed, he supposed, to withstand the ages. He allowed Poppy to take him under the arms, didn't protest as she hauled him out of the tub, dried him off with a flick of her wand, and bound him snugly in the green dressing gown the house-elf had brought for him. He insisted on walking to the chair, leaning heavily on the mediwitch as he did so, and glared at Poppy as she fussed with it and him in it.
"It's fine," he finally snapped, then immediately questioned where that little splash of vitriol had come from. He labeled the emotion, set it aside, promising himself that he would investigate it further at a later point.
Poppy said nothing, merely tucked a blanket around his hips. She gave him a measuring look, then waved her wand in a complicated pattern. "Incendo!" she said, and the chair moved obligingly forward with a small jolt, the wheels never touching the ground.
She led the way to a side entrance of the castle, one that opened out on a small herb garden of entirely medicinal plants. She opened the door, waving Severus' chair on ahead, and closing the door behind her. Bright sunlight beat down on them, and a sharp scent of lavender assaulted the sense of scent, then other herbs made their way into his vision. Bees hummed merrily, going about their business as if nothing had changed.
He was taken by how open the world seemed, the blue sky reaching out above him until he couldn't see it beyond the trees of the Forbidden Forest, which loomed menacingly in the distance. He knew instinctively that one direction lay the Quidditch pitch, the other the greenhouse. And it was beautiful.
They stayed as they were, in the midst of that tiny garden, the sun playing on their backs and bees and butterflies buzzing and flitting around them. Severus had no thoughts, didn't let any spoil his enjoyment of this moment.. For a time, it was a perfect, beautiful moment. Finally, he reached out a scarred hand, let it brush against a particularly large shrub of rosemary, upsetting the bees that had landed in it. They buzzed angrily for a moment, but subsided quickly, returning to their tasks.
"It's overwhelming, isn't it?" Poppy said softly.
Severus was caught between wanting to protest or agree. Afraid that if he agreed it was overwhelming, she would take him and that hateful chair back inside and he wouldn't have another chance to get out again. "No," he said, instead. "It's a perfect moment."
A/N: This was a very difficult chapter to write. There were four revisions and rewrites, until I finally arrived at this. The third revision was about twice as long, and I decided that I was trying to pack too much information into the chapter. The first two were simply too... I don't know... sappy, I think. After lengthy discussions with my beta, I finally decided on this one, and am now posting it before I start fiddling with it too much, or more than I have been. If you see any mistakes, let me know. I assure you, they are all mine. Huge thanks to my beta, who will remain nameless by her own request; XiaoGui who was a major inspiration for this (If you haven'tread 'The Final Atonement', you really should); Cecelle for being extremely spiffy; and Verity Brown for writing fantastic angst. Go read their fics if you haven't.Go!