Disclaimer: All rights belong to the inimitable J.K. Rowling.

Too Deep for the Healing

Chapter 36

The Restorative Remedy

That conversation, however, did not take place soon.

Draco was still staring at the door that had closed after his former professor, when he was already looking for Mrs Primrose. He wanted to speak to her before seeing Irene.

Mrs Primrose was nervous. When Snape inquired after Irene, the nurse explained that she thought Healer Burbage had suffered a nervous breakdown (no wonder, since she had been really overworked recently), and she had to rest. Oh, no, she would be well in a week or two (by the way she needed a special potion, although Mrs Primrose could not and Healer Burbage would not say what it was exactly), but, until then, the hospital was without a healer (Healer Burbage must not do any work for a couple of days at least) and Mrs Primrose was just about to talk to Mr Grey about the situation. She thought a substitute healer had to be requested from St Mungo's urgently. One simply could not take a risk with so many people in the camp. At the moment, Healer Burbage was sleeping.

It was Sunday, and Snape had already spent half of the weekend in the laboratory (it had been necessary, since all those patients needed their medications). Apart from that, he had hardly slept at night, he had not eaten anything that day yet, and he was still wearing his clothes of the day before. Still, he had another job to do – he knew now that Irene had suffered a shock and he wanted to make a potion for her.

While Irene's potion matured, he went back to his hut and he returned to the hospital a few hours later carrying, under his cloak, a small parcel wrapped in simple paper - the phoenix-shaped silver candlestick with a magical candle, which he had received from her at Christmas. It was a good thing his fellow convicts did not suspect he could have such valuable possessions hidden in his hut – and he took care that no one should see the silver object in his hand.

No sooner had he entered the hospital than he saw Mrs Primrose hurrying towards him.

"Where have you been?" she cried anxiously. "You are needed here!"

Snape thought some catastrophe must have happened, but he found it was only the usual life in the hospital. Mrs Primrose was busy and apparently very reluctant to start a treatment entirely on her own; and, Snape being the only other active person present who was in some way connected with the healing profession, she looked to him for reassurance as well as for actual help.

"I must see Irene first," he said.

"Not now," she replied. "You couldn't stay with her anyway. You have other things to do."

"I have just prepared a potion for her… for the shock."

Mrs Primrose eyed him curiously.

"Then you knew she had had a shock before I did," she said. "You'd make a good healer. At any rate, Healer Burbage says I can depend on you. If you give me the potion, I'll take it to her."

"Why can't I -?"

Mrs Primrose lowered her voice.

"She does not want to see anybody. It seems the shock has affected her magic."

Snape looked at her aghast.

"Why haven't you told me before?" he demanded. "I must make another potion for her then!"

"It can wait," she replied. "She must rest now."

Snape glanced at Mrs Primrose's old, trembling hands and he wondered whether the witch was so afraid of staying alone with the patients that she was willing to prevent him from visiting Irene even for a couple of minutes or whether – perhaps - it was Irene's wish that he should stay away from her. Mrs Primrose gave no explanation, and Snape could not bring himself to ask for one.

In any case, it was true that they both had work to do. There had been a broomstick accident, the two victims of which (the camp shopkeeper and a visiting family member) had to be treated urgently. The other patients also needed to be looked after, and later Runcorn was brought in with various symptoms of the flu. Snape did everything in his power to assist Mrs Primrose and to honour Irene's promise to the nurse. Secretly, he even used the battered substitute wand, ignoring the danger he could put himself in.

Late in the afternoon he finally found the time to start brewing a potion called Restorative Remedy, which had the power to restore magic destroyed or weakened by a trauma. It was a complicated potion, at least as complicated as the Wolfsbane Potion (which he made every month now, just as he had done years before at Hogwarts, when Remus Lupin was still alive), and finishing it was going to take several hours.

In the meantime, he could not stop thinking about the newly developed situation with the distinct feeling that once again things were going the wrong way for him. Irene had been through a shock that might affect her feelings towards him; he had not been able to see her since early morning; and he had had to realize that his plan with the Resurrection Stone could never work, while the trial was only a couple of days away. Even what Draco had told him came back to haunt him. It was night when the potion was ready, and he went to Irene's door in case she was still awake – he wanted to give her the medicine as soon as he could. He was not even surprised when he found Tanner lurking nearby, but a hard stare from him was enough to make the guard go away.

Irene looked ill, and Snape could not suppress a feeling of guilt, in spite of all the arguments of logic and reason he was well aware of. He stood on the doorstep, handing the goblet of potion to her, waiting for her invitation to enter. Irene opened the door wider to let him in. He saw the Pensieve on her table.

"You must drink it immediately," he said, although Irene was a healer and hardly needed his instructions. "I'll bring you some more potion tomorrow. If you keep drinking it, your magic will be restored in a few days."

Irene nodded, thanked him and drained the goblet. Snape longed to touch her and to kiss her, but her gaze was so cold that it made him stop at a distance that one would keep from a stranger.

"I must apologise to you," she said. "It was a mistake to leave that stone in my care. It is gone. I'm afraid I'm a bad guardian of your secrets. It may not be a good idea to trust me with the Pensieve either."

Her voice was emotionless, and Snape glanced at the stone basin wondering whether the removal of his possessions from Irene's care was a symbolic act signifying that he had no place in her heart or life.

"Never mind the Resurrection Stone," he replied. "It isn't important. Draco… has told me what happened."

"He told me something, too."

"I know."

His tone was apologetic but she was not moved. Their gazes locked for several moments, unblinking and unyielding.

"Already at Hogwarts I tried to tell you," Snape said, "that I had no chance to save Charity's life. Nor was I able to prevent what happened when she was dead."

"Were you watching the… snake?"

"I had to watch."

"Yet, when I asked you about her, you told me she had been buried. I didn't realize then what you meant by it."

The accusation made his colour rise. He did not consider himself a liar – not more at least than the job of a spy had made it necessary, and still it was the second time that day that he had been reproached for insincerity… and why? Because of one of the many evil atrocities the Dark Lord (the Dark Lord, not him) had committed.

"Is it better now that you know it?" he snapped suddenly. "Does it make you happier? Does it help Charity?"

"No," she answered, "but I still… asked you. And you watched me look after the Malfoys, treat their illnesses and injuries and the old man's alcoholism with care and compassion, and never mentioned how they had stood by idly when my aunt's corpse was eaten by a snake!"

"Anyone who would have done otherwise," Snape pointed out, "would have had to be prepared to die along with her."

"I know, Severus, I know, but I can't help feeling that they did not care that much. It must have been a scary and gross experience, but did they mind anything beyond that? They may have felt sick thinking they could end up in the same way, but I doubt, I doubt very much that they felt bad about the murdered prisoner who was not one of them! It was my right to have this information about them!"

"And about me, I suppose," Snape replied, "because I was there, too. Idle, as you say. And I have paid dearly for it, I am being punished for it right now, and so are the Malfoys."

Irene turned even paler than she had been, and, for a moment, she seemed to hesitate.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked in the end. "Why did you lie?"

"Because you needed consolation, not another shock," Snape said. "It would have been sheer cruelty to tell you the full truth."

"What did it matter to you how I felt?" Irene asked. "In those days, I meant nothing to you."

Snape was silent. It was difficult to believe that there had been a time when he knew her and yet she meant nothing to him. He stepped to her table, pushed the Pensieve aside and took the candlestick with the magical candle out of his robes. He lit the candle with the substitute wand. That was the last piece of magic it was able to do, and Snape threw the charred little stick into Irene's fireplace.

Then he turned back to her.

"What other reason do you want to hear?" he burst out. "Why is it not enough that I tried to spare you some pain even though you were only my healer? Do you believe me incapable of acting on selfless intentions?"

Irene was staring at him, frozen.

"But perhaps you are right," he continued. "If you want the full truth, I will admit that I may have been ashamed, I myself may have been horrified – I still am when I recall my unavoidable dealings with the Dark Lord and his followers. I may have lacked the courage to make you face the full depth of the Dark Lord's cruelty and his absolute disrespect for all other life besides his own, of which I knew much more than I had ever wished to. Nevertheless, for what it's worth, you have my word that my main purpose was to save you from more pain, from meaningless, useless pain that would not have helped you or anyone else."

Impulsively, he picked up the Pensieve from the table and left. Irene did not stop him.

He felt too tired to go back to his hut, too tired to fall asleep even, therefore he simply returned to the laboratory, where, hurt and distressed, he gazed into the empty depth of the Pensieve. It reminded him of another job to do, and he was still in two minds whether or not to yield to the demands of the justice system. He abhorred the idea of being dissected, analysed and put on display like a dead animal in a laboratory while he was still alive enough to feel the pain of it. Without that, however, despite the testimonies Potter and his friends had gathered, the outcome might not be any better than before, and another guilty verdict would probably seal his fate forever.

It was time he got accustomed to seeing his own memories – not only in his dreams but when he was awake and alert. He had to prepare for the trial. He had to get used to re-watching his discussions with Dumbledore. Yet, from time to time, another memory stole into the fore of his mind, demanding his attention: the memory of Charity Burbage in the Malfoy Manor.

Eventually, he surrendered to the inevitable and plunged into the memory, without even trying to resort to Occlumency. The scene seemed chillingly real, and he had to fight off genuine terror and disgust to be able to keep watching and to keep focusing on the questions he wanted to answer truthfully. Was what he had done really the only thing to do? Could he be sure that, for cowardice or ineptitude, he had not failed to do something he could have done? Then and there, lifting but a finger to save Charity's life would have jeopardized Dumbledore's whole plan without any realistic hope of helping the Muggle Studies teacher who was being punished by the Dark Lord in the circle of his closest followers. Yet, could he have prevented – through cunning and dare – what was to befall her dead body? Would it have mattered once her life had been taken?

It would have mattered to Irene. But would it have been right to risk for that all that there was to risk – lives that could still be saved in future - when Charity was dead anyway?

Yet… in his place, Potter would surely have tried to do something. Ironically, James Potter's son had never understood the true extent of his own importance, he had never cared how many people had to give up their lives just to keep him alive, and he would have hazarded anything to save the single victim in front of his eyes. Which of them was right?

Both of them had been following Dumbledore's plan. It was the same plan that kept encouraging the hot-headed Gryffindor but kept telling him - the greatest actor of the House of Slytherin, as Draco put it – to keep his cool and his cover, to play his part to perfection, to never jeopardize the greater good, cost what it may to him or to others. Dumbledore had treated the two of them differently, he had given them fundamentally different roles, and he had expected them to follow very different codes of conduct, and they had reaped very different rewards. In spite of that, they did not seem to be able to get rid of each other, as though the old man, with some perverse pleasure, had tied their lives together forever, so they could watch each other's glory and misery, respectively, as long as they lived.

Snape emerged from the Pensieve without any answers, without being any wiser but feeling a great deal more miserable than before. How could he ever have hoped that Irene's love for him – for him - would last? What did it matter how he might fare in front of the Wizengamot on Tuesday if he lost what had given him the strength and the will to start this fight for justice in the first place?

It was quite dark in the laboratory, the candles had already stopped burning and he sat with his face buried in his hands. Perhaps it would have been a relief to be able to cry now, but his eyes were dry like the desert, as the promise of a new life that he had almost started to believe in suddenly appeared to be nothing more than a delirious illusion that no sane person would accept as reality.

He was in this state of mind when someone called him by his name.

"Severus."

He jerked his head up with the instinct of a wild animal sensing danger in its den. Irene was standing behind his back, holding the magical candle in one hand and her wand in the other. For a brief moment Snape thought she was pointing the wand at him, but her fingers opened, and the wand fell onto the floor. Snape picked it up for her, but she did not take it from him.

"I would like you to keep it," she said. "I… promised Mrs Primrose that you would help her with everything until the substitute healer arrived. This is at least a real wand. You will need it."

"You'll be better in a couple of days," Snape replied. "Perhaps sooner. Your magic will return."

She shook her head.

"It'll take a while."

Snape put the wand into his pocket. The very idea was a blatant violation of the most basic rules of the camp, but he would have done more if she had wanted him to. His work in the hospital would certainly be more effective if he used a wand.

"You were watching something," she said. "It upset you."

"I'm all right," he muttered.

He still did not know how things stood between them.

"Do you want to… share it with me?" she asked tentatively.

"No," he answered at once, horrified. "It cannot be shared."

Irene looked hurt, and, momentarily, it crossed his mind that she might understand better what he had tried to spare her if she watched the memory with him in full, but he knew he could never do it. He would never make her watch what had happened that day in the Malfoy Manor; he would never allow her to watch it… Not that memory, ever.

"I see," she said. "Good night, Severus."

She was in the corridor when he caught up with her.

"Irene."

She stopped. The candlelight coloured her otherwise pale face.

"There is knowledge that is best not known," Snape said. "I have more than my fair share of it, believe me. I tried to protect you."

"I know," she murmured softly.

Snape reached for her hand and she did not draw back from him.

"Have you had dinner?" she asked unexpectedly.

"Not yet," Snape answered, surprised.

Now that he came to think of it, he realized he had not had lunch either.

"Nor have I," she said. "We can have dinner together – if you want to."

"You need to rest," he reminded her, inwardly struggling with himself, "especially while your magic is not what it should be."

Irene smiled.

"I have already prepared everything. I knew you wouldn't leave the hospital tonight."

The next day, on the last day before his new trial, Snape was carrying Irene's wand quite openly. He used it as a matter of course, as the most sensible and natural thing to do, and, indeed, the people in the hospital seemed to either approve of his actions or look the other way every time he performed a piece of magic. The flu was spreading, and he soon found himself performing the regular duties of a qualified healer. It meant great responsibility, and he could not afford to make a single bad decision, but the situation was somehow familiar, and he felt surprisingly at home in it. No one objected to being treated by him, as though he was already a free wizard and a true healer.