Disclaimer: I am a starving college student - I own nothing.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed, all the questions that were asked should be answered in this chapter.
Chapter 26: On the Psychological Instability of Various Beings
Severus shut the door to Draco's room softly behind him, and hurriedly made his way over to Harry's room. Those two would be the death of him yet.
Severus spoke the password to Harry's room, entering without preamble.
"Potter!" said a startled Severus.
Harry looked up from his bed, his eyes dead.
"Stop that immediately!" said Snape.
Harry looked down at his torso, which was covered in hot wax that the boy had been pouring onto himself from a lit candle.
"No," said Harry. "I like candles," he then added, as if that settled the matter.
"Harry," growled Snape, walking over to the boy and forcefully extracting the candle from his grip. At least the boy wasn't slashing at his wrists. Snape made a mental note to check on Draco again in an hour's time.
"What, pray tell, do you think you are doing?" demanded Snape.
"Playing, Professor," said the boy, a sardonic grin adorning his face.
Snape was not amused. Snape was also not particularly thrilled with the state of the boy's - his son's - body.
"Why are you so thin?" asked Snape.
"Well, Professor," said the boy, smirking once again, "my relatives did not see it fit to waste too much food on a freak like myself."
Snape growled. Snape liked growling. Had he let the Dursleys off too easily? He would mention this to Poppy when she returned, in any case.
With a flick of his wand, Snape made the dried wax on the boy's stomach disappear.
"It's my fault, you know?" said the boy.
"What is your fault?" asked Snape.
He couldn't possibly think that it was his fault that his horrid relatives had starved him, could he?
"That Sirius is dead," said Harry, in that same, dull tone of voice.
"Partially, yes," agreed Snape.
"I wanted to blame you. See, if I convinced myself that it was all your fault, then I wouldn't have to blame myself, but I blamed myself anyway, so it made no difference," continued Harry, as if explaining something very simple to Neville Longbottom. Snape often took that tone of voice himself, so he recognized it easily enough.
Snape wanted to say that he ought to receive some of the credit for the mutt's death, but he did not think that Harry would be amused, and even Snape could not find enjoyment in torturing the boy when he was in such a state.
Snape pulled a chair over to the boy's bed, for once at a loss for what to do. He didn't know what to say to the boy, yet he also knew that it would not be safe to leave the boy unattended right now. It was a shame the werewolf wasn't around, else Snape could pawn the situation off onto him.
"Well, there is nothing to be done for it now. The only productive thing you can do is to make sure you don't make a similar mistake again, which, might I add, you seem to have been doing your utmost to repeat your folly. Might I suggest remaining on school grounds from now on?" said Snape. Snape wasn't the type to offer comforting lies, they rather annoyed him, actually.
"I'm an idiot, aren't I?" said the boy dejectedly. That was not the response Severus had been seeking. He had hoped to at least turn the boy's melancholy into anger. Snape would have been pissed at the boy for being whiny and for wallowing in self-pity if he hadn't known that the boy's reactions were a result of withdrawal from the bungled Cheering Draft.
"Then again, I suppose that's to be expected. I take after my father, you see," continued Harry. Snape reconsidered his earlier decision not to become angry. The boy was now running the sharp end of his quill along the exposed skin of his torso.
"Quit your mourning and clean yourself up, then get in bed. I will not have this insolence from you," snarled Snape as he snatched the quill out of the boy's hand. Snape thought he had done an admirable job on restraining his temper. He wanted to hex the brat.
Oddly enough, the boy complied. He went into the bathroom, and Snape could hear running water.
Snape decided that it would be prudent to wait in Harry's room while the boy bathed, and decided to have some tea while he was waiting. Now, where was that dratted elf? Oh, no, Snape was not going to deal with a psychologically unbalanced house elf. He would not!
Snape smirked. Albus had set the elf on Potter-duty, Albus could deal with the results. He would send the Headmaster a note, with his regrets on not being able to see to the elf personally, as he had two boys in a similar state to deal with. Albus, you brought this on yourself, thought Snape, his smirk still firmly in place.
Snape firecalled an elf , requesting tea, before delivering his intended message to the headmaster in a like manner. Albus had this coming to him, though he supposed he should be thankful to the elf: Dobby had, after all, prevented his son from carrying through with his ludicrous plan to run off to gods-know where.
Snape sat by the fire, drinking his tea. Peach and ginger flavored black tea, to be exact. Snape was a happy man. Most people would not have believed it of Severus, austere as the man presented himself to be, but Hogwarts's resident potions master was actually very much a hedonist.
Speaking of hedonism, what was Potter doing? Indulging himself in an hour-long bubble-bath?
Fear suddenly rose in Severus's chest as he imagined all of the horrible things that Harry could be doing to himself just then, while he was sitting in this next room, sipping his tea. Why hadn't he thought of the risks earlier? The boy could try to drown himself, and for Merlin's sake, the boy had a razor in there!
"Harry!" bellowed Snape, a note of panic to his voice which he neither wanted to admit was there nor contemplate the origins of. "What in Merlin's name are you still doing in there?"
Moments later, the door to the toilet opened, and a red, wrinkled, and fuming Harry Potter emerged from within.
"Soaking. Is that a crime too now?" snarled the boy. "I should ask you the same question. What are you still doing here? I had thought you had left."
"You were hardly in a fit state to be left to your own devices," sneered Snape, a sense of relief washing over him. "Do tell me, though, why my classroom was in the state it was in when I returned, and why you and Draco were sitting in a puddle of a viscous, pink-tinted substance."
Harry audibly gulped. Snape was getting a bit more accustomed to this calling Potter 'Harry' thing, and less often resorted to referring to the boy as 'boy,' whether mentally or verbally.
"Er, well, you see, Malfoy threw a handful of porcupine quills into my potion - that was before you left - but I thought I could compensate for it, and salvage the potion by adding some Eye of Newt, but that apparently didn't work..." Harry's voice trailed off as he finished speaking.
"The porcupine quills would have turned the potion into a Melancholy Cocktail," explained Snape "and, yes, adding Eye of Newt would negate the effect. You likely misjudged the amount of this component that should have gone into the potion, thus ending up with a highly powerful Cheering Draft also containing traits of a Melancholy Cocktail: and thus the severe withdrawal symptoms you are experiencing. They are partially the result of the psychological withdrawal from the potion, though in conjunction with the melancholic attributes already possessed by the potion these effects become especially severe. As you could not accurately determine the number of porcupine quills Draco added to your potion, I will not hold the fact that you incorrectly assessed the amount of Eye of Newt necessary to counterbalance the effect against you."
Harry smiled. The boy seemed to think that that was as close to a compliment as he was likely to receive, and he was right. Snape wasn't one for flattery. The boy was also very likely relieved that he wouldn't be serving a month's worth of detentions with Filch for destroying his classroom. Snape had an evil impulse to tack that last bit on, though he suppressed it.
Snape only hoped that his conversation with Draco the next day went anywhere near as smoothly.