Chapter 37 – Wrapping Up

The Burrow basked in the mid August sun, butterflies and fairies flitting around the flowers by the sandstone wall. Gnomes huddled in terror or ran for their lives as the hoard of small children chased them down and kicked them out of the garden. Adults lazed on the newly mown grass or played a desultory game of Quidditch with those children who were so inclined, using the Burrow's collection of well used brooms.

Remus faced off Harry as seekers for the two teams while Ron and Draco played keeper. Lysander and Thorn Malfoy played beaters on one team while the two Potter children played beaters on the other team. Much against their better judgement Hermione and Ginny played chasers against Hanova Malfoy and William Weasley. The teams were terrible and would never make it into any league any of them had ever heard of, especially when Hermione wouldn't go any higher than her head and Severus, playing referee, was not much keener. Still, the kids loved it, literally flying rings around their parents while their younger siblings ran on the field under the brooms, cheering and teasing and coaxing them into giving rides.

"Honestly, Uncle Remus, even a blind man could have seen that snitch!" Lillian complained as the two teams put up their brooms and sprawled over the grass with glasses of cold lemonade Molly served.

"Hey kid, a blind man did catch it," her father reminded her, poking her in the ribs with his toe.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Lillian complained and tickled her father back, until they were rolling through the grass in fits of giggles.

"So Ron, what happened with the nutters from the Wizarding destruction group?" Molly asked when the children had gone off to play in the woods attached to the Weasley property.

"Mu-um!" Ron moaned then tossed himself flat on the grass, drumming his heels in imitation of his younger self. "Okay, okay!" he conceded when his wife gave him a poke in the ribs. "The meeting at Potten End gave us the hard core members of the Decency League for the Removal of Magic. The old lady, Flora Higginbottom, was the leader and main supporter of the mad movement. Do any of you remember Primula Higginbottom from school? She would have been in seventh when we were in second."

"Rather good at potions and quite bright on the whole, Ravenclaw, of course," Severus murmured, carding his fingers through Remus' hair absentmindedly. "Youngest of the horde of Higginbottoms, wasn't she? The eldest probably went to school with Bill and Charlie." He glanced over to where Molly was sitting in a low garden chair.

"Yes, there was some sort of joke going around that they were almost as prolific as Arthur and I and that if the two families married red roses would be natural symbol for the newly created Family," Molly mused with a shaken head. "Bill and Charlie were not amused!"

Ron shook his head in amazement at his mother's easy mentioning of their father and brothers without pain or more than natural sorrow for their loss. He owed a huge debt to Severus and Remus for rescuing her from herself. Clearing his throat noisily, he glared at the audience and continued his story. "She was in training as an Unspeakable when she lost four sisters to Voldemort. He went on a rampage and started killing off Muggle families of known opponents. Well, the old girl who formed and lead the group was her mother and she took Primula's fight to heart, only she expanded it to mean all wizarding kind. It was her warehouse, her idea and her money that propelled the whole campaign. She was going nowhere until Gilbert Nelson met her and together they cooked up the scheme to manufacture and distribute Direstium. After the bomb thing in the cellar, we took the whole lot into custody and our Potions Master dosed them with Veritaserum. The whole conspiracy was not very large, relying on the old lady's money and the ability of the others to raise more money amongst their friends and relatives. There doesn't seem to be any other groups operating in the country and I think we may have contained this outbreak quite nicely. We basically rearranged the Muggle minds so they looked like crackpots, murderous crackpots but still nutters. The police and anti-terrorist squad took over from there and, with a little realigning of their memories; they took charge of the Muggle offenders. We decided to keep John Parkhurst's memory intact but put a Confundus spell on him so he can't mention it to anyone. Nelson is now serving his sentence in Azkaban and won't be out for a very long time."

"What has been done about all that contaminated Sleep Tight that was put out onto the market?" Desiree asked curiously, poking her husband again to keep him talking.

"I'll bruise woman, I swear I will!" he whined then grinned when she poked him some more. "Alright, already. Parkhurst did a broadcast on the Muggle radio and informed the public that certain batches of Sleep Tight had been infected by a terrorist group calling themselves the Decency League for the Removal of Mothers. He announced that the potion had been poisoned and the children would die so therefore no-one would be a mother any more. He told everyone that they weren't entirely sure which batches of Sleep Tight had been affected so please hand them all in immediately for disposal. The other news also gave out reports that fifty five children under the age of three had been poisoned and four had died already in various parts of the country. It almost caused a riot and the number of sickly children being reported to their nearest infirmary went through the roof but I think we managed to get all the Sleep Tight out of circulation. While we had such a flood of children coming into the clinics and infirmaries we vaccinated them against the poisoning and treated anyone we found who was infected. Of course we made it a free treatment so no-one objected and they all signed paperwork saying they wouldn't sue the manufacturers of Sleep Tight or we would have had an even worse disaster of greedy punters on our hands."

"What about those who were affected by the Direstium, who's magic was totally nullified?" Hermione asked softly into the contemplative silence.

"Some of them were totally happy about losing the magic as their families had finally accepted them as normal. Those who were unhappy accepted some memory charms and in one case an Obliviate to make them happier with their lives. The Anderson girls were barely affected and their brother who has orkistm, oh sorry Autism turned out to be a genuine Seer and you know how rare they are. No wonder they had been given that strange Muggle diagnosis. Their parents were very happy to have expert help in bringing him into control of his gift and the people at the Department of Mysteries were totally thrilled to have a new Seer as powerful as young Jason Anderson will probably prove to be."

"And Vincent McIntyre? How is he recovering?" Hermione asked.

Severus glanced across and snorted in disgust. "The old goat is doing very well. Would you believe he has taken to courting my Aunt? Consuela leToya is simpering and flirting and acting like a debutant at her presentation ball!"

The laughter echoed over the quiet afternoon. Remus smiled fondly at his husband and picked a piece of grass to nibble on. "Sandy is also courting, or being courted by Brian Bridgewell, the chap she rescued from that second nutter who poured Sleep Tight into him. His family have given him official permission to continue."

"Any detrimental effects over that infection?" Desiree asked curiously.

"No, neither Brian nor Vincent were poisoned for long enough to destroy more than the most superficial edges of their abilities. Both will continue to have treatments every three days for a further month to be sure but it looks like they have both been cleared by the special unit."

"Even better, I was able to buy into Brimmers when the scandal of the contaminated potion dropped their stock by fifty percent. I bought enough blocks of stock to pretty much control the company and write the company policy regarding what they should produce and how they should distribute." Draco smiled in quiet satisfaction, hugging his wife. "What it means is that Severus' potion to inoculate the kids in future can be quietly distributed without fuss. We will be releasing Sleep Tight back onto the market in a green colour and banana-lime flavour to make sure it is not confused with the pink poisonous variety. We also think we should put the antidote in the colourless variety of infant analgesics too, just in case."

"So, all is well that ends well?" Molly asked as she brought out more drinks for her guests.

"There is only one more thing to address now and that is Angelinus," Severus murmured softly. "I promised that, once the Direstium crisis was over, I would see about separating the twins. Well, the crisis is over and we have pretty much formulated a method to split them that promises success. So, for the next few months we are going to be rather busy."

The adults all looked grave as they wished the Snapes good luck.

oo0oo

Harrison Flamel, paediatrician to Magical children, rose hurriedly when his receptionist announced the arrival of his guest. Striding forward, he held out a hand and shook the thin man's hand unselfconsciously. "Come in, come in, Professor Snape. Glad you could make it. I think I have the candidate we need," he chortled as he shut the door on the waiting room full of patients.

"Do you, indeed?" Severus murmured as he allowed himself to be led to a chair and seated hurriedly before paperwork was thrust at him. "What's all this?"

"If you remember, we were discussing the need to build a body, a whole body to house a complete mind and soul? Yes? You said it was all very well to build rabbits and Kneazles but how was a person supposed to know if the whole personality had been transferred across into the new body?"

"Yes, yes, I do remember what I said," Severus snapped impatiently, rubbing his tired eyes.

It was all very well to say, just clone a body but to actually do it was not easy at all. First the selection, creation and modification of the necessary potions had been a nightmare! Every step forward had been accompanied by a step backward. Every time he managed to achieve one set of goals, they directly impacted on what had gone before and half the time wiped out all past gains. When he managed to grow the skeleton then the potion to form the organs had a bad reaction with the bone potion and blew up a cauldron. When skeleton and organs were functionally formed then the vascular system failed to grow or in one experiment grew so wildly it was like Devil's Snare coming out of the cauldron to get him. When he finally managed to get a whole and perfect body crated, then as soon as he lifted it out of the primal soup it had formed in, it fell to pieces in a bloody, stinking heap. It had been very disheartening.

He had to admit, everyone had been very supportive of his efforts, friends, family, students even. His seventh year students had taken the project as their own and had made so many batches of bulk potions, healing potions, blood, bone and scar removal potions that seven of the twelve had been offered unconditional places in the College of Potion Makers and five had been offered healer positions at St Mungo's. It was a record for any Potions class and he was extremely proud of his students.

When, after the holidays he found he did not have time to do the research and teach classes, Albus had volunteered to be his substitute but alas the old man had not been very successful. At his wits end, Severus had taken the fifth-years and seventh-years who were preparing for exams and turned a blind eye to Albus' shenanigans in his classroom with the rest of the years. Unfortunately the arrangement came to grief when a fourth-year Ravenclaw managed to make an incendiary solution that even the containment charms on the Potions classroom ceiling failed to hold and the roof fell in, injuring seven and rendering the classroom unstable until the house-elves had called in a Master Mason to repair it.

Grimly, Severus had to withdraw his opposition and agree to the employment of a substitute to take his classes. He was very reluctant after the last substitute who had abused the youngest and most vulnerable of the children as well as used school facilities for illegal brewing. After rejecting twenty-three prospective candidates for reasons that seemed trivial to everyone else, he was on the verge of giving up his research to take up his teaching duties when his Aunt stepped into the breach.

Consuela leToya was not used to anyone gainsaying her when she decided to do something and it was with some trepidation that Severus finally agreed that she was 'a', well-qualified enough to teach potions and 'b', probably capable of keeping the brats from blowing themselves up and 'c', possibly able to maintain the strict discipline the classroom needed to make a and b possible. He showed her his lesson plans, pigeonholed in his office by year and term. He gave her the passwords to his storerooms and cupboards and very reluctantly stepped aside to allow her to take the first of his classes, a Gryffindor and Slytherin mix of sixth-years who were almost as bad as the Potter/Malfoy rivalry of past years. At least they didn't have a Longbottom to blow them all up regularly.

Consuela didn't swirl or billow, she didn't snarl or snap, she simply suspended offenders from the ceiling by their ankles over their own cauldrons, or the cauldron they had attempted to sabotage. It sent Severus off into fits of laughter such as the school had never seen before and made all the years sit back and take notice of the gently smiling, silver haired sadist they had been inflicted with for potions. That worry taken care of, Snape had buckled down to some serious research and finally made a lot of progress, enough to create a horde of rabbits, a plague of rats and more Kneazles than was wise.

Professor Grubbly-Plan even brought him a young Thestral who had broken its back to try his technique on, the largest creature he had attempted. It worked perfectly and the newly created Thestral foal had gone back to its mother with no rejection or problems in moving about at all. It was time for a human subject and that was where the progress hit the rocks of morality with smashing force.

Experimenting on humans was more than frowned upon, it was downright forbidden by law and classed as a Dark Art. The emotions the very mention of experimenting on children aroused were overwhelming and almost had Severus lynched, never mind sent to Azkaban, when he suggested it. Fortunately, Harrison Flamel, premier authority on magical children's maladies weighed in on his side, as did Madam Director Adrienne Ladoux, Director of St Mungo's. Both made it clear that there would be no experimentation on children but there would be very necessary trials of new and oft times radical treatments for the more serious maladies and would anyone dare deny a child the best chance at healing available or would they condemn a child to eternal pain and torture because they were too bigoted or blind to allow someone to treat an unusual disease?

So here he was in young Flamel's office with a wad of papers in his hands and a rather anxious young wizard peering hopefully at him with puppy-dog eyes. He cleared his throat self-consciously and turned his attention to the paperwork. "A magical accident? What sort of accident causes such a mixed log of symptoms?" Snape asked, pinning the paediatrician with a blatant glare.

"A horrible one." Harrison sighed deeply, pushing across a photo for Severus to study.

He turned it this way and that trying to decide which way the child, or mass of flesh, was lying. "This is alive and conscious?" he asked incredulously.

"Amelia Jeanne Harper is alive and conscious, an intelligent ten-year-old trapped in that twisted wreck of flesh and bone. Can you blame her parents for being willing to try anything that comes along to try and unscramble her? They have been victimised and preyed upon by every hag and hedgerow con artist you could imagine. But each time something fails, they shake their head and are taken for a ride by the next con artist who promises the world."

"I will have to speak to the child first…" Severus began and suddenly found himself hauled up by one arm, a most unusual thing. Unresisting, he was towed into the next room where an anxious older couple sat wringing their hands, a large boat-bodied perambulator between them. Severus barely heard the introductions to the elder Harpers or the couple's protests as he studied the 'thing' carefully cradled on a goose down quilt. A single blue eye stared up at him from the centre of a pinkish lump of flesh, arms, legs and heads sprouting from odd angles around the central ball. Gripping his wand through the holder, Severus cast a silent Legilimens and fell into… a perfectly sane and rather well ordered mind.

/Hello, who are you?/ the mind asked, female in tone and as curious as a Kneazle.

/Snape, a Potions Master,/ he was forced to reply. /I am assessing your sanity before I agree to treat you, or not./

/Oh dear, I wish mum and dad wouldn't. Most of you are frauds and it just hurts./

/What happened to you?/ Severus asked gently.

/I don't know. I found a sparkly ball in the garden and when I went to pick it up, everything went funny and then I was like this./

/Dark artefact, obviously. I wonder who your parents offended. Do you want to be normal again? It might not work, I might kill you by accident, you know?/

/Better than this,/ the girl said flatly with a maturity far beyond her apparent age. /Do what you can and if it does kill me, at least mum and dad will be free again./

Severus withdrew from her mind to see the three adults staring at him with varying degrees of questioning in their eyes. "She is a good subject and is willing to try, even if it kills her. She accepts the risks, do you?"

oo0oo

It took weeks to get the paperwork notarised, to set up the theatre of operations, to train the team Severus wanted to assist him, make sure everyone was well versed in the parts they were to play. Personally, he would have preferred to keep the operating small and quiet without any advertising at all. However, Madam Ladoux convinced him that large and splashy would suit their purpose much better; hauling their experiment into the light would make sure no-one pointed the accusing finger if anything went wrong. Making it a team effort would spread the kudos if all went well but also spread the blame if anything went wrong. 'Besides,' she said with an elegantly Gaelic shrug, 'it kept the Harpers occupied and off his back while he was working!'

Finally, when the big day came it was almost an anticlimax, the team going into action with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of efficiency. Severus stood back and watched as the girl's soul left her frozen, dead and scrambled body, to be caught deftly in the soul-net spells he had already ordered cast. He studied the process intently as the body formed in the cauldron around the core of the soul. That was an unexpected development that made Severus scribble copious notes. He had thought to create the body then introduce the soul but nothing had happened until the girl's soul had hopped into the cauldron. Perhaps the soul was yet another catalyst to the potion and the 'ripeness' of the potion was secondary to the introduction of the soul to the brew. If that was the case then he would have a few hours' grace in which to rest once the potion was brewed and settled. Oh well, just another wrinkle to be ironed out! Just as the process was almost finished, Severus called a halt, noticing something curious. The soul was not married to the body properly, a small amount of the fluid not yet absorbed into the new body. They waited a good hour until Severus was satisfied that the soul had settled in before cautiously lifting the limp little girl and laying her on the towels beside the cauldron.

The body obviously was not breathing and a pinch from a Medi-witch did not start the process. Panic ensued until Muggle methods of CPR were called upon, the young wizard working hard until the girl drew her own breath, causing a ragged cheer to break out. Limp and twitching spastically, the girl was at least breathing on her own. When her eyelids were rolled back, Severus found her mind intact and fighting hard to try and control her new form.

/Relax, child, give it time. You are as helpless as a newborn, you are a newborn and you need time to learn how to walk, talk and move again. Your parents are waiting to greet you and I am happy with the results. Congratulations on your rebirth-day,/ he sent drolly, making the child gurgle a laugh in the real world.

/Thank you, Sir, thank you so much!/ she managed to say before she fell into a deep, healing sleep.

oo0oo

Remus was waiting for Severus in the sitting room of their suite, wringing his hands anxiously. He almost melted on the spot when he saw the smile in his husband's eye and the spring in his step. There was no need for words, the news transmitted in body language alone and it was all good.

"She will start Hogwarts next year on schedule." Was all Severus said about his remarkable achievement when pressed by his colleagues at the staff table. In private he was a little more forthcoming, mentioning that getting the soul out of Angelinus might be difficult and he would have to think about it carefully as the old body had to die to release the soul into the catching net and they really did not want to kill Angel while releasing Linus.

"There are some things that I will need to refine but all in all, I think we are ready to go ahead," Severus announced a week before Halloween."

"When will the team get here and when will you start?" Albus asked with a nod of understanding.

"No team, just Remus, Poppy and I. Minerva and Filius, may I ask you two to cast the protection and soul-net spells on the arena. I think you are more capable than the person who did it at St Mungo's." He turned to his colleagues and raised an eyebrow.

"I thought you did the spell casting," Minerva said with a faint frown.

"I did. As I said, I believe you and Filius are much more capable at foolish wand waving than I am."

"Only you could make a compliment sound like a complete insult," Filius chortled, clapping his hands in excitement. "We'll have to cast all the air filtering and germ protection spells that usually go around a St Mungo's operating theatre as well as the specialised spells Severus wants in place, Minerva. How close to the magical core of the castle do we need to be, Severus? Ah! Headmaster, can we use the old distilling rooms near the potions laboratory? They will be in a perfect spot and they already have a Floo which can be connected to the internal system without any difficulty at all! Oh, do come along, Minerva, we must get started! This is so exciting!" The small man slid down from his chair and almost skipped out of the room in his hurry.

Minerva rose with a little more dignity and patted both Remus' and Severus' shoulder in passing. "It will all go as smoothly as we can manage," she assured them with a decisive nod as she hurried out after her fellow professor.

"I didn't actually mean for them to do it right now. I still have some research to do, perhaps another couple of weeks worth, actually," Severus remarked plaintively as he turned to the headmaster in apology.

"We have all been waiting for this day with bated breath, my dear boys, and we all wish you the best of luck so you will have to excuse our enthusiasm. Take all the time you need, we will all be ready to play our parts when you are ready to play yours," Albus assured him softly as he too rose and went off to see if he could help in the preparations.