LOST PERSPECTIVE 7
PAYBACK TIME
By Bellegeste
A/N: Thanks for the reviews guys. I'm going to try and load this story fairly rapidly -I know that'll mean I get fewer reviews overall, but that's not the only reason we put these fics on the net (or is it?). But I do appreciate them. This is the last of the 'hospital' chapters...
CHAPTER 4:Partners in Shock
Supporting Snape's head, her hand gently under his chin, Hermione was nervously preparing to pinch his nostrils, and blow into his mouth, when his lips parted and with a wheezing hiss he sucked in a meagre breath. At last his chest rose. (Hermione figured that, in moving him, she must have somehow cleared his airway. Or perhaps her spells had worked after all. Had she been the sort of person to thank her lucky stars she would at that moment have been praising the heavens - pinching that nose, performing 'mouth to mouth' on Professor Snape was getting way beyond the call of duty! She wasn't even certain she'd have been able to go through with it. It… well, frankly the idea made her skin crawl. And if he didn't like being touched, he wouldn't have been too happy with it either!) Then he was gasping, snatching greedy lungfuls of air, and straining to sit up, his eyes wide and wild.
"Kughguhh - " It was a croak, an embryonic sound, brutally aborted.
"Don't talk, Sir. He's gone - whoever it was - Harry went after him - "
Perhaps she shouldn't have told him that. Alarm flared in his eyes. His throat was working, gargling Shrake spines by the look of it, in between the jagged breaths.
In exasperation he made a grab for the flask of Soothing Potion on the bedside cabinet, wrenched out the stopper, tipped half the contents into his mouth and, with a super-human effort of will, forced himself to swallow.
Hermione eyed Snape in dismay. He was upending the flask over his neck, flinching as the inky blue liquid splashed onto the broken skin. For a few seconds the flesh wounds stood out in indigo and blood-red relief, a grotesque tattoo of the assassin's grip. Then, before Hermione's astonished gaze, the swelling began to subside, the scratches to seal. The spilt Soothing Potion evaporated into the darkness in a vanilla scented haze of citrus smoke.
"Sir! You can't… you shouldn't… that potion's too concentrated. The Healer said to be especially careful about the dosage…" she protested, feebly, pointlessly.
Snape didn't need words to express contempt. The look he shot her conveyed both scorn and a world-weary defiance. 'Tough', it told her, 'I know what I'm doing'. Though, as he sat there, wincing, his body twitching with tiny shudders as the potion penetrated the deeper, damaged tissue, Hermione seriously wondered if he did really know, or if he just didn't care.
Where was the punctilious stickler for accuracy and exactitude, the disciplinarian who quantified spillage in terms of deducted House points, the perfectionist who, if nothing else, had instilled into each and every one of his students a cautious respect for the 'power within the potion'? Here he was knocking it back like Firewhisky; slapping it on like cheap aftershave. This was an altogether less controlled, more primal being than the Potions master she thought she knew. At dinner on Christmas Eve, he had adopted a mellow persona and she had fancied herself privileged to be granted a glimpse of the 'real' Snape. And now? What was she to make of this? It was more than whimsical impetuosity, darker than desperation. There was a calculation, a harshness, a negation of pain - a familiarity with pain. It was a rationalisation of risk, a trade-off: recovery for the price of discomfort. This was a man for whom personal suffering had ceased to have meaning. She tried to attach words to describe that flash of insight into yet another Snape. She knew she had seen the shadow of the Death Eater behind the eyes…
x x x
"We must leave. Now."
His gravel whisper startled her. Before Hermione could argue, Snape swung his legs out of bed and stood up - and, as his knees buckled beneath him, just as quickly sat down again, the colour draining from his face. Waxen and faint, he sagged forwards and would have pitched onto the floor had she not stepped in to catch him. She tried to push him back, upright, away from her, but he was heavy. The sensation of cradling Professor Snape's head against her stomach was problematical, even for the ever-practical Hermione.
"Sir?" Was he conscious? Stupid, stubborn man! You couldn't take that much potion and not expect side-effects. Men! Didn't they ever grow up?
"Uh… shock… in shock. All right in a minute…"
She felt the pressure on her middle lessen as he struggled to raise his head. She was, it occurred to her ironically, viewing him from a unique perspective: it was probably the one and only time she would be looking down on those black, greasy locks.
"Don't rush it, Sir. Take some deep breaths - if you can."
She steadied him with trembling hands, feeling his shoulder bones ridge- sharp through the blood-spattered nightshirt. A few seconds more and he made himself sit up. None too steady herself, Hermione sank down next to him on the bed. They sat, side by side, silent partners in shock.
x x x
Pounding feet in the corridor… Harry flung himself into the room and slid to a juddering halt at the foot of the bed. Hands braced on his thighs, he leaned over, panting for effect.
"Lost him!" he puffed, seemingly dazzled by his own heroics. "Must have Disapparated on the stairs… no sign… searched everywhere… Nothing!" A hint of melodrama cloaking the failure.
Their lack of response goaded him into looking up. Only then did he take in the situation: Snape, scarred, white and shaken, and Hermione, her expression fraught and at the same time furious, pulling a blanket more closely round his shoulders.
"What's up? Are you all right?" Harry spoke to Snape but was confronted with blankness. Snape stared with glazed eyes at the polished floor, fingering a button that had been torn loose in the struggle. Harry turned on Hermione.
"I thought you would have at least got some help."
"Where from?" Hermione hissed back at him. "You tell me where from! I shouted for help, but no one came. Not a nurse, not a Healer, not even the squib who mans the twenty-four hour snack kiosk. I suppose they all went charging off with you, chasing intruders. What did you do - round up a posse? Tell them it was some Christmas party game? Were you doing the conga down the corridor? While I was left here all on my own… and Snape couldn't breathe… and…I didn't know what to do… I had to use wand magic - Harry, I don't know the proper spells for this sort of thing - and now - now he's gone and drunk enough Potion to stop a rampaging Hippogriff in its tracks."
"He did? Potion?" This seemed to worry Harry more than Snape's being strangled.
"Swigged half a bottle. That's why he's so zapped. It's… well… it's…it's 'dangerous to exceed the stated dose'!" she declared, falling back on the formulaic phrase rather than admit to her panic. "Harry, he was completely irresponsible! He might have OD-ed… Think how that would have looked. Really impressive for a Potions master!"
"Miss Granger - "
It was only her name, but Hermione's arm snapped away from his shoulders and down to her side as though he had yelled 'Protego'.
"Enough of your hysterics! Alarmist drivel! I am neither irresponsible nor, as you so inelegantly put it, zapped. Who is the Potions expert here? You? Those half-brained, soi-disant Healers? Or me?" he rasped angrily. "I had fully expected to experience a reaction. It was, as you see tolerable and of short duration. Your concern for my reputation is unnecessary; your assessment of my competence is misjudged. And I don't need your simpering sympathy."
Have it your own way. She bit her lip, not wanting to argue with him now, not after what he'd just been through. But she knew what she'd seen, and, in her misjudged opinion, the end did not justify the means. It was all very well for Harry, crusading off after trespassing Death Eaters, she thought, but Snape might have died, and what could she have done about it?
"So you got your voice back?" Harry stated the obvious.
"I must speak to the Healer in charge."
At last he was talking sense.
"Of course you must, Sir. He'll need to examine those scratches."
"No, Hermione. I wish to discuss the matter of security, and then I intend to leave."
"You can't, Sir! You're not well enough to go anywhere. Is he, Harry?"
She appealed to Harry for support, trusting in his concern for his father's wellbeing.
"Too damn right!" Harry exclaimed hotly.
Hermione smiled complacently - together they'd be able to convince Snape to stay and rest. But Harry continued,
"Stay here and be murdered in our beds? Not bloody likely! The sooner we're out of this place the better. Dumbledore left us that Portkey, - we might as well use it. We'll be back at Hogwarts in no time…"
End of Chapter. (Some of the later chapters are longer than this,I promise.)
Next Chapter: DUMBLEDORE'S DIAGNOSIS. There's no fooling the Headmaster - or is there?