"No, no - you have to lean on this shoulder - "
"You're about - as supportive - as a thrice-steamed flobberworm."
"It's not my fault you're so bloody tall."
"Nor is it mine you're so grossly ineffectual. I told you to leave me be - "
"Was it too much to ask for that poison to keep you unconscious a bit longer?"
"Unconsciousness would be vastly preferable to having to listen to your caterwauling."
Ariadne's shoe slipped on a pocket of mud, causing Snape to hiss in pain. Had his mouth not been so close to her ear, it doubtlessly would have gone unheard, drowned out by the rain beating savagely all around them.
"Sorry," she said stiffly, swallowing her snide retort as she caught a glimpse of his pale, twisted brow. He said nothing.
His cloak enfolded her entirely, the soaked wool sapping the little warmth her body produced. She was surprised - and given the situation, grateful - to discover that beneath the billowing black robes, Snape was a very thin man - all angles and wiry muscle.
"It's just there," she said, indicating some unseen point before them. The downpour was like a curtain of ice, obscuring anything further than a few feet. Thick oaks loomed over them like great guardians standing immobile in the damp haze. Gradually, the dark mouth of a small cave came into view. Its rocky face was covered in a carpet of moss.
His movements were slow and awkward as she pulled them both forward. When she craned her neck to look at him, she found his eyes focused not on the cave, but her.
His expression betrayed something wary, as if he was seeing her for the first time.
"Did you awaken long before me?" he asked tonelessly.
"Brilliant, yes, let's stop for a chat in the middle of this freezing downpour. I find just a touch of hypothermia refreshing, don't you?"
"How did you know the cave would be there?"
Ariadne faltered. They had been woken by the torrential rain in almost the same moment, roused from their unconscious heap on the forest floor. She hadn't explored the area any sooner than he had - she had never seen this place before in her life.
"I..." she said. "I don't...know."
The suspicion in his face doubled. He turned his shrewd gaze to the cave.
"Homenum revelio," he murmured.
"No, that won't work - "
She stopped herself so quickly, she almost bit her tongue.
He sneered. "Do you think me so weak a wizard that a simple bit of wandless magic is..."
She felt the blood drain from her face. The muscles of his arm were growing tense around her shoulders.
"What," he began with the coolness of an adder before its strike, "do you mean, 'That won't work'?"
"We need to take shelter," she dodged. She made a feeble start forward, but he had become an iron statue.
With surprising speed, the arm around her shoulders was snatched away, replaced by two unsteady hands that forced her toward him, thumbs pressed hard against her collarbone.
"What did you do?"
Rarely had she shrunk back from him as she did now. "It's difficult to explain."
"Indulge me."
"I had - you would have been dead in minutes if I hadn't done something."
For once, she knew exactly what he was thinking - she had never seen his emotions so plain on his face. He had been there, that day in the classroom, where she'd been forced to divulge the dark truth of what her powers could do.
"I taught myself to make the junctures that channeled their magic choke and die, like sawing off a limb, until the magic was so lost within them that they could cast nothing, conjure nothing."
She gasped as his cold grip tightened, his palms creeping closer to the base of her neck. His dark silhouette inflated, his nostrils flaring, teeth bared.
"Why?"
The words rushed out. "The poison wasn't targeting any part of you physically, from what I could see. It was seeking out your magic - choking it. Without any magic to target, it looked like the poison would be harmless. So I...turned off the tap, as it were. Suppressed the channels of your magic, so the poison couldn't destroy it completely."
His suspicion confirmed, he froze. He barely seemed aware of the words that bubbled to his lips, his eyes unfocused and distant.
"You should have let me die. It would have been a mercy."
She gawked at the look on his face.
"It's temporary," she blurted. "Your magic isn't gone - just repressed."
"Temporary," he repeated.
"And evidently, it worked. For now."
Some of the characteristic sharpness returned to his features. "Reverse it. Immediately."
"Don't you understand? I can't do that."
"Why ever not?" came the reply through gritted teeth.
"The poison is still in your system. I turn the channels of your magic back on, and you die."
His face went completely blank. His hands abruptly dropped to his sides, balling into fists. He stared at her for a long moment, turned, and without another word, began limping rather ungracefully toward the entrance of the cave.
"On second thought, maybe that's not a bad option," she muttered, shuffling after him to escape the freezing rain.
The cave was more shallow than she'd hoped or expected - and somehow, even colder than it was outside. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the disorienting darkness. She had considerable difficulty pinpointing Snape, who was further camouflaged by his clothes.
She discerned the outline of his shoulders slumped against the cave wall, and watched him slide stiffly to the ground. His magic may have been muted, but in the heavy silence, his anger at her, their situation, and his own weakness buzzed in her head like a swarm of bees.
She rubbed the back of her wrist across her forehead, peering into the rainy fog that abutted the entrance to the cave.
"How could this have happened?" she murmured. "None of it makes any sense."
The fact that Snape passed up the opportunity to meet her question with a biting reply was testament to his distress.
"Well, wherever we are, I'm sure the Headmaster is already organizing a search party."
He scoffed. "I credit that the identity of our attackers did not escape your notice?"
"The centaurs, you mean?"
"No. The other magical quadrupeds that were shooting arrows at us."
She bristled, but he seemed too exhausted to keep up the sarcasm for long. Even in the shadows, she could see the dark circles blooming like purple bruises under his eyes.
"Centaurs are supremely territorial beings at the best of times. During a tribal bloodfeud - such as this - they are notoriously sensitive to any encroachment on their terrain. They likely saw our trespassing in the forest as an act of aggression." Snape shifted, taking a sharp breath. Ariadne felt the twinge in her leg. "Dumbledore would never risk inciting them further by sending more of our kind into the forest. The centaurs would view it as an outright declaration of war - it would undoubtedly endanger the students."
"So...no one is coming to help us."
He was grimly silent.
She exhaled shakily. "Right."
She squinted at the fog, letting out a frustrated groan. "I just don't understand - how did we end up here? We're miles from the boundary of the forest. We didn't get here ourselves - surely the centaurs didn't drag us here and just leave."
He rubbed a finger absently under his chin. "Perhaps..."
"What?"
"What do you recall before we appeared here?" he asked carefully.
"You pushed me out of the way -"
"After that," he snapped.
She considered. "I remember falling...It was dark, like a vacuum. Then nothing."
He nodded. "Magizoologists have written about strange experiences in this forest - among them, stumbling upon one area of the forest, and waking up in another. They describe a similar sensation."
"Almost like traveling by Portkey."
"A reductive conclusion," he said condescendingly, "but yes. The Portkey would be the man-made equivalent of something more archaic and naturally occurring. A Portslip."
"What, so - if we retrace our steps, we could find the Portslip and transport ourselves back to the edge of the castle grounds?"
"If it were so easily done, do you imagine I would be sitting here for the pleasure of your company?"
"You tell me."
"No," he spat nastily. "Portslips are not so governable by logic; they appear and disappear at will. They are a category of ancient magic about which little is known."
She shivered, the chill of the cave wrapping itself around her limbs. "Alright, well. One thing at a time."
Warmth was increasingly becoming her first priority. She supposed they could build a fire the hard way, if she found some kindling. She did still have her magic - but she dreaded the moment it became clear that, unlike Snape, she had very little experience in the way of using it without her wand.
She drew her hands up to her mouth, blowing on them for warmth. She half expected them to be tinged blue, but to her surprise, they appeared normal. Her body gave another violent shiver. She was colder than she'd ever been in her life.
Something clicked, and she squinted at Snape through the darkness. He was trembling, and as she got a better look at him, she could see that the floor of the cave had grown three shades darker with blood.
"Oh," she cried. "Why didn't you say something?"
"For what purpose?" he replied sourly. "So I could receive the benefit of your expert medical care?"
She started toward him just as she saw him reach for the arrow protruding from his leg. Her world exploded in a stab of blinding white pain. Her knees and palms hit the dirt as she crumpled, gasping. Shadows pressed down on the edges of her vision - she wanted to vomit.
After a moment, she found her voice. "I may not be an expert medi-witch," she rasped, "but the next time, you could at least give me the courtesy of an advance warning before you do something so thickheaded!"
Snape regarded her with mild surprise, looking from her to the arrow shaft he now held in his hand. Without a word, he turned his attention back to tightening the makeshift tourniquet around his thigh.
Ariadne took a slow, shallow breath through her nose, and closed the remaining distance between them. She stooped to lean against a flat rock at his side, waiting for the nausea to fade. Here, too, there was ample cave moss - she almost slid right off the rock as she added irritably, "I don't know what good that did you, anyway. It definitely didn't stop the bleeding."
He slipped a hand into the breast pocket of his robes and pulled out a familiar vial, filled with the tree bark she had watched him collect that afternoon.
To her surprise, he extended the vial to her, avoiding her eyes. "Chew this."
"What?" She looked from his hand to the wound. "Oh."
She shifted uncomfortably.
"Why don't you want to?"
The corners of his mouth were downturned. If he hadn't just lost a ridiculous amount of blood, she would have thought she detected an odd flush to his alabaster cheeks. Even his hooked nose was a faint shade of pink.
"Did you not manage to pass your O.W.L.s? The blood clotting properties of Wiggentree bark are only activated by witches' saliva."
"Oh," she repeated.
She went to grab the vial and inhaled sharply, realizing that she was missing a glove. In their hurry to escape the rain, she must have been left it in the mud.
She felt Snape's eyes on her.
Gingerly, she took the vial from him, taking extra care to avoid an accidental brush of skin. He said nothing.
The Wiggentree bark tasted like old sock. She masked a light cough and tried not to think about it too hard. In fact, she was so preoccupied with not thinking about it, she was startled when Snape spoke again.
"Empaths may not be able to heal physical wounds, in the literal sense," he said. "But to take a victim's pain onto oneself and not succumb to it entirely - that is a skill that is very rare, and very difficult to master. Only a gifted witch would be capable of it."
Snape was many things, but he was not stupid. She supposed it was natural for him to realize it, after her reaction to the removal of the arrow shaft - and his own apparent lack of one. Saving his life hadn't only involvedthe supression of his magic.
The corner of her mind where she'd attempted to stuff the majority of his pain pulsed like a weak migraine. As long as it remained stable, she could manage it - barring any sudden physical changes, or arrows being ripped out of wounds. Without the aid of an empath, this kind of pain would easily have sent most people into shock.
She met his eyes, waiting for the biting follow-up. He held her gaze steadily. It dawned on her that the thinly-veiled compliment might be his attempt at a thank you.
She choked a bit, and the Wiggentree bark threatened to make a reappearance.
"No, you fool," he said sharply. "It needs to be chewed for longer."
Her face heated. He was probably enjoying the fact that he had literally made her eat dirt. "For your information, I did pass my O.W.L.s, and I don't remember anything about it taking this long to activate clotting properties - "
She stopped short. What she did remember was that Wiggentree bark, in addition to its use for clotting, was recommended as a remedy for systemic pain relief.
The flustered manner in which he'd handed her the vial came back to her.
She opened her mouth to press him, but silenced herself immediately - the look on his face told her she would surely regret it. She cleared her throat and chewed for a few more moments. Sure enough, the distant throbbing in her temples abated somewhat.
She tore off a clean corner of her robe. There was no ladylike way to do it - she spat the masticated goo into the wad of fabric.
He made as if to reach for it, but recoiled in surprise as she took the poultice in her gloved hand and applied it to the angry wound herself. Even through the occamy hide, his skin was hot to the touch. He went very, very still.
Ariadne pursed her lips, tasting muck.
"Remind me to bring a breath mint next time."
"If there is to be a next time, I'd prefer you smother me with that moss."
Despite herself, she laughed, the pattering of the rain blooming to fill the silence between them.