Chapter 4: Depression

It's a minor miracle that Potter hangs onto any of his Slytherin friends in the aftermath of the dragon incident. He has earned quite a bit of infamy, indignation, and intrigue among his housemates as the first Slytherin in a generation to provoke Severus into taking points; the infamy only grows when Potter refuses to tell the truth about what he did to lose those points. The fact that Draco lost the same amount of house points to Minerva doesn't garner nearly the same interest.

So it's nothing short of a testament to Potter's charisma, or perhaps just his social capital, that he still has Slytherins willing to sit with him in classes or the common room. Nott and Davis remain steadfast in their friendship, or acquaintanceship, or whatever arrangement they have going on; and even Zabini and Bulstrode join them to study on occasion, when Potter is separated from his Gryffindors.

Quirrell looks progressively worse each time Severus sees him. He looks like he's contracted a genuine slow-acting ailment, beyond the mere stress of his mission to steal the Stone or the pressure of his mysterious master's expectations. Severus catches him walking along the third floor corridor no less than five times over Easter break, but as far as he knows, nobody has actually opened the trapdoor yet.

Then Easter holidays end and the final exam fever begins in earnest. Severus expands his office hours to answer questions about Potions, but fortunately he is much too intimidating for the majority of the dunderheads he teaches to risk bothering him. Some of his NEWT-level students don't have the same apprehensions, although they have generally proven themselves bearable. He does his best with the younger Slytherins who come to him for advice, and he only thinks he traumatizes half of them.

...

Whatever goodwill Severus was building for Potter since he decided to convert him into the consummate Slytherin lies dormant in the aftermath of the dragon fiasco. It remains so until the Slytherin vs. Hufflepuff quidditch match, which they win by a large margin when Potter catches the snitch on the tail end of a truly spectacular dive.

Severus allows himself some grudging pride for having allowed Potter onto the team, which translates into some grudging triumph as he observes the growing friend group Potter draws in at the post-match party. His notorious dragon-related point loss is forgotten in the excitement of another quidditch victory, which means the more industrious and less supercilious first- and second- years are free to flock to the boy wonder once more.

...

Whatever resentment Severus has been nurturing for Hagrid lasts until the staff meeting a week before exams, when the gameskeeper finally makes himself useful and mentions that somebody has been hunting unicorns in the Forbidden Forest.

"Three of 'em have been killed, tha' we know of, and the centaurs are sure it's a wizard o' some kind doin' the killin'," he reports. "They think they scared 'em off the firs' two times, but whoever it is, they've managed ter drink the blood a' least once."

Severus' mind jumps immediately to Quirrell. Anyone desperate enough to try robbing the Philosopher's Stone out from under Albus Dumbledore's nose could definitely be desperate enough to drink unicorn blood, especially if they believe the Elixir of Life will soon be within reach.

Quirrell looks pale and nervous, but then he always looks pale and nervous these days, and the mere thought of anyone drinking unicorn blood is enough to make any academic nauseous. It's not enough to be incriminating, no matter how much Severus would dearly love to incriminate him in front of the rest of the faculty.

Still. He will be keeping an annoying close watch on Quirrell from now on.

...

It's easier said than done to keep an annoying close watch on another staff member when both professors are inundated with final exams to proctor, final assignments to grade, and final lessons to provide to a seemingly endless wave of stressed and nervous students.

In a careless mistake borne of a decade of peacetime, Severus barely notices when Dumbledore leaves the castle, swamped as he is with his own work to do. He doesn't have the energy to care where anyone but Quirrell has disappeared off to, nor wonder what could possibly distract teacher's pet Granger away from her urgent need to speak with Filius about her Charms exam.

He doesn't even notice that Potter has snuck out of bed until he's jerked out of sleep by the arrival of Dumbledore at his quarters. He's barely awake and still fumbling with his dressing gown when he opens the door, but the shot of adrenaline that hits him at the words, "Mr. Potter is in the infirmary" certainly does the trick.

They floo to the Hospital Wing, where Severus finds Minerva already present, head bent close to Poppy's. Granger is flitting nervously between two beds containing Weasley, with a bandage around his head, and Potter, with no visible injuries, though he lies unnaturally still.

A sharp intake of breath is all the reaction Severus allows himself in front of a student. He nods to the headmaster, who summons Minerva and Poppy, and they all gather around for an explanation. As the only one of their foolish trio conscious at the moment, Granger is obliged to provide it.

"I daresay you weren't convinced by my assurances this morning that the Philosopher's Stone was safe?" Minerva prompts drolly.

Granger's face twists in acute distress. "I'm sorry Professor, really, but we were convinced that with Professor Dumbledore gone, Sn- somebody would try to steal it tonight!"

"They brought their concerns to your attention?" Severus clarifies.

"They were seeking Professor Dumbledore and had to settle for me instead," Minerva confirms. "I promised them the Stone was quite safe."

Severus keeps his sigh internal. There goes his favorite fall-back for berating students who acted impulsively.

"Quite alright, my dear," Dumbledore tells the girl. "I commend you for your deductive reasoning, not only for gleaning what it was that we were guarding in the school, but also under what circumstances it might be at risk."

Underneath the obligatory blush, Granger looks surprisingly guilty. Her eyes dart between all four adults, but seem to fall back on Severus more often than not. "You're sure it was Professor Quirrell, who was in there?"

Dumbledore frowns. "Indeed, Miss Granger. I retrieved his body myself."

Granger lets out an "oh" and turns a rather concerning shade of green, which prompts a small recess during which Poppy plies Granger with a calming draught. The medication is, in Severus' opinion, about half an hour overdue, but better late than never is occasionally a truthful adage- just not in a potions lab.

While Granger recovers from her shock, Severus puts the pieces together: Granger's guilty glances his way, the fact that Potter didn't approach him for help after being rebuffed by Minerva, his strange assessing stares during that string of detentions in which Severus impressed upon him how many wizards out there would like to see him dead… in hindsight, when interacting with children as idiotic as Potter, perhaps it would be prudent not to lay on the menace quite so thick.

"I promise you, Miss Granger, that I have no intentions to win the Philosopher's Stone for myself nor make any attempt to end Mr. Potter's life," he drawls.

Granger pales again but the effects of the calming draught are already clearly starting to manifest.

"You suspected Professor Snape?" Dumbledore asks. He sounds amused. Severus is not.

"I'm sorry, Professor!" Granger gushes; not even a calming draught, it seems, can make her any less eager to please. "I just saw you at the quidditch game, when Harry's broom was jinxed, and you were staring right at it and chanting something."

"A countercurse, you silly girl!" Severus barks.

"If you don't mind," Minerva cuts in loudly. "I would like to learn how Mr. Weasley got his concussion and Mr. Potter ended up magically exhausted and mysteriously unconscious!"

Something freezes inside Severus' chest. "Mysteriously unconscious?" he breathes in Dumbledore's direction.

The headmaster only gives him a reassuring smile and condescending pat on his knee. "I do have my theories and I am not concerned."

"So you decided that three first-year students were sufficient additional protection for the Philosopher's Stone, should a fully-grown wizard attempt to steal it?" Minerva prompts.

Granger grimaces at the implied reprimand. "Well, by the time we got there, Fluffy was already asleep and S- Quir–- erm, Professor Quirrell had clearly gone through the trapdoor."

It does not escape Severus' notice that Granger knows the loathsome name of that blasted Cerberus. He will be having words with Hagrid, whether Dumbledore backs him up or not.

"So you decided to go after him?" Dumbledore guesses.

Granger nods. Severus bites back a scathing question about what possible good that could have done, only because he knows that hearing her pathetic excuse for a justification will do no favours for his mood.

She goes on to recount their nauseatingly ill-advised trip through the protections set up for the Stone. Unfortunately, her account ends with Potter going on alone into the last chamber and Granger turning back to check on Weasley. The most pressing answers, it seems, still lie somewhere in Potter's frustratingly unresponsive mind. They sit quietly for a few minutes; processing, Severus assumes, although what there is to contemplate except the utter reckless stupidity of this particular group of witless children, Severus couldn't say.

Minerva, luckily, seems to be aware of another witness to the subsequent events. "And what did you find when you arrived, Albus?" she asks.

Dumbledore casts a sharp glance at Granger, who is looking determinedly back at the headmaster, although her eyelids are also drooping rather insistently every few seconds. "It has been quite an eventful night for you, Miss Granger," he says kindly. "And I do believe that you should be getting some sleep; I daresay that any calming draught at this hour of the night will have you nodding off soon."

Granger protests feebly, but, sure enough, her head is also lilting precariously forward. Poppy coaxes her onto a cot with a stream of soothing words, and the girl is asleep within five minutes. With a last muffling and monitoring charm cast on her curtains, Poppy returns to the impromptu council to hear Dumbledore's conclusion to the saga.

"I received an urgent summons to the Ministry last night- a summons I later realized was falsified and plied with a strong compulsion charm. As soon as I'd fought it off, I returned to Hogwarts to find four separate alerts from my monitoring enchantments on the third-floor corridor. I passed Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley on my way down, and they confirmed that Mr. Potter was still below the castle, and had entered the Mirror chamber alone. By the time I got down there, Mr. Potter had removed the Stone from the Mirror of Erised-"

"But how!" Minerva gasps.

"A lovely little enchantment of my own invention," Dumbledore says fondly. "He could only have retrieved the Philosopher's Stone if he had no intentions of using it. The ultimate trap for one such as Quirinus and his master, although I regret that it did ultimately land Mr. Potter with the task of protecting the Stone."

A strange sound halfway between a snarl and a growl erupts from Severus' throat entirely without his consent.

Dumbledore turns his twinkling blue eyes at him. "I do apologize for inadvertently leaving Mr. Potter open to more danger. I should have realized this was a potential outcome."

"Potter and his dunderhead friends never should have been able to get that far in the first place!" Severus yells. "You knew the traps were embarrassingly simple for a grown wizard! If I didn't know any better I'd say they were specifically designed to challenge first-year students!"

"They were specifically designed to both slow any potential thief and give the illusion of a simple solution to each obstacle. I'm sure I walked you through the arithmancy prior to the start of term? The Mirror of Erised was the true trap all along; one designed to stall thieves in their place as they attempted to solve its puzzle, convinced as they would be that the Mirror, too, must have a relatively simple solution. Or, failing that, drive them mad with unattainable images of the Stone itself."

"The Mirror-"

"Gentlemen!" Minerva shouts. "Can we get back to the discussion of what in Merlin's name happened to Potter?"

"He's my student," Severus snarls, "and I'll-"

"He's my patient!" Poppy interrupts. "And I need to know what he's been exposed to! You lot can argue amongst yourselves all you want once I know what I'm expected to work with."

Severus crosses his arms petulantly but quiets. He won't admit it aloud, but he, too, feels rather desperate to learn what happened to Potter.

"Apologies, Poppy," says Dumbledore. If he thinks that apologizing somehow gives him the moral upper hand, however, he's sorely mistaken. "Where was I? Ah, yes. Mr. Potter was in possession of the Stone and was engaged in a physical altercation with Quirinus. Quirinus was attempting to kill him, and Potter appeared to be burning Quirinus anywhere he made contact with bare skin."

"How?"

"I only have theories, but I believe they are sound. Crucially, I also observed tonight that Quirinus had abandoned that singular purple turban of his, which quite literally revealed the face of the spectre that I believe has been possessing him all year: Voldemort."

"No!" Minerva gasps. Poppy gives a strangled half-formed shriek. Even Severus lets out an involuntary hiss at the name.

"I have long suspected that Quirinus was angling to obtain the Stone on Voldemort's-" (more gasps; Severus flinches as well) "-orders; however, it seems that Voldemort was… keeping a closer eye on Quirinus than I had anticipated."

"But Albus, why didn't you do anything if you suspected-?"

"Because I thought it more prudent to keep him under my watchful eye, Minerva."

"And yet he almost killed Potter thrice under your watchful eye!" Severus snipes. "And it sounds like this last time, he almost succeeded!"

"Ah, yes. I think this will be of particular interest for you, Poppy, and perhaps for the rest of you as well. You see, I do not believe it was Harry Potter's own power that defeated Voldemort ten years ago. I believe it was, instead, a form of arcane sacrificial magic bestowed by Lily Potter unto her son that protected him from Voldemort's Killing Curse. In fact, I believe that protection lingers on in Harry's blood: a love so pure and so powerful that Voldemort, and any being he inhabits, cannot bear to come into contact with it."

Severus hasn't occluded so hard in years, but he does so now; he plunges into the frigid depths of his mind where no mention of Lily nor her love nor the death magic she performed bears any meaning for him. Dumbledore continues on, and Severus listens, and he does not react.

"Thus when Quirinus, possessed as he was by Voldemort's spirit, attempted to touch Mr. Potter, he found he could not. And Mr. Potter, realizing this advantage, was defending himself quite literally with his bare hands when I finally arrived in the Mirror chamber. Quirinus was alive but badly burned when I tore him away from Mr. Potter. Once he had noticed my arrival, however, Voldemort's spirit visibly departed Quirinus' body and fled, barrelling through Mr. Potter in the process."

Poppy shrieks again. "You're not suggesting the boy was possessed!"

"I am not," Dumbledore reassures her. "After so many months of possessing an adult human, not to mention the exertion of both his attempt to steal the Stone and his altercation with Mr. Potter, I have no doubt that Voldemort will not have the strength to possess another human for quite some time. However, the brief contact that his intangible wraith had with Mr. Potter would have been a great enough shock to render a child unconscious."

"And Quirinus?" Minerva prods. "You said you removed his body-?"

"Indeed. I'm no magical mortician but I suspect that he suffered some magical exhaustion from his altercation with Mr. Potter, and was therefore too weak to survive the trauma of Voldemort's dispossession."

For a moment, despite their various misgivings, all four of them share the same grim look and, undoubtedly, the same thought: good riddance to bad rubbish. Sometimes, they have come to learn over the years, the loss of another Defense professor is no great loss overall.

Minerva is the first to break the bleakly unrepentant silence. "You don't believe Mr. Potter will face permanent damage, Poppy?"

The matron balks at the question. "I'm just a school medi-witch," she laments. "I can't say I'm an expert on the effects of momentary interaction with the disembodied spirit of a Dark Lord, not to mention whatever ancient enchantments Lily placed on him."

Both witches turn as one to Dumbledore for guidance. "I do not believe he will face permanent damage, no, although I'll admit I, too, feel a tad out of my depth when it comes to arts as dark as these."

Nobody has the nerve to look at Severus after that implication, but the way they all stare determinedly downwards betrays the impulse all the same.

"I can look into it," he begrudgingly acquiesces.

Dumbledore nods jovially, as if he had asked for Severus' help himself. "Excellent. Thank you, Severus. Hopefully, of course, Mr. Potter will wake within a few days, and we can examine his mental state more thoroughly at that time." He claps his hands on his knees. "If you wish to berate me in further detail, Severus, you're welcome to accompany me back to my office."

Severus still wants to strangle Dumbledore, yes, but he finds himself oddly reluctant to leave the infirmary just yet. His eyes drift over to Potter's bed of their own accord.

"Of course, we can always resume that conversation another day," Dumbledore says, eyes twinkling.

"I might study his condition to better guide my research," Severus suggests gruffly.

"Of course," repeats the headmaster, sounding unbearably smug. "Good night, Minerva, Poppy."

Dumbledore bows out and walks away, and only then does Severus allow himself to move to Potter's bedside.

In sleep, with his eyes closed, there is nothing more of Lily in the boy than perhaps a certain softness of the jaw; he's all Potter in looks, really, but even that resemblance is lessened with his atrocious glasses off. And, well, Severus never saw Potter Senior in repose, never saw him so still except in death, and, for what it's worth, that Potter was never so small even in his first year at Hogwarts. Like this, Harry Potter is just a boy, just one of Severus' Slytherins to protect, a lone child who's been in entirely too much danger in Dumbledore's school.

After a moment, he comes back to himself and hurries to cast some dark arts-related diagnostics. The cover-up probably doesn't fool either of the witches who are present and probably still watching him, but thankfully, they don't comment. He doesn't dare look their way-– looks only at Potter and then at the parchment Poppy hands him for notes-– but eventually, after some more whispered conversation in a corner, he hears Minerva depart through the floo.

Potter has lingering traces of dark magic on him, but nothing at the level that would suggest he practiced it himself, nor even that it was practiced near him. He supposes that's more or less what one could expect from a brush with a dark and immortal spirit. It's most concentrated around the boy's head, which is concerning, but at least his brain activity doesn't seem much disturbed for an unconscious eleven year-old. Severus will have to repeat the tests in a few hours to see if the magical traces linger.

That doesn't mean he has to stay here, though. His bed beckons from his quarters. He can have a quick kip and return for the follow-up tests. Yes, he'll stand up now and go back to his quiet, comfortable four-poster.

He keeps telling himself that until he finally nods off, in the creaky wooden chair next to Potter's bed.