Disclaimer: See Chapter One
Updated Sunday 3rd April 2005
Chapter Fifty Six: Scared Stiff.
"Do you think we should let Crabbe and Goyle out of the closet?" Ron asked as they dashed from the Slytherin Common room, their polyjuiced forms rapidly disintegrating.
Harry snorted at the inferred Muggle joke. "No, let them eat their way out. I want to get back to Hermione. See if she's alright."
Nodding, Ron walked slightly ahead of Harry. "By the way, nice job keeping your glasses on when we were in there you dolt!"
"What was I supposed to do? Stumble around there blindly?" Harry asked. "I thought my eyesight would adjust to the form I was taking, so either it didn't work or he's as blind as I am!"
"Maybe he needs glasses and that's why he does so badly in class?" Ron shrugged, turning around to walk backwards as he looked at Harry and pulled a face.
"Oi Ron, watch where you're going!" Harry called out in warning as Ron tripped over backwards on something on the floor. "You're going to trip…" He finished lamely.
"Ow!" Ron groaned, poking around as he lay sprawled on the floor. "Hey, it's soft!"
Harry pulled out his wand and cast a lighting charm. His eyes taking in the unmoving form of the student before him, Harry gasped.
"Estella?" he exclaimed. "She… she's been petrified, Ron. Look!"
Sure enough, Estella would not respond to any of their attempts to revive her. The girl's eyes were wide and staring at them emptily, glazed with tears as her body lay rigidly against the wall; both hands outstretched in a defensive position, a wand tightly clenched in each.
"Cor, where'd she get two wands from?" Ron gawked.
"Looks like she was casting a 'lumos' with one and intending to defend herself with the other." Harry said, pointing. "Look, the wand tip is still glowing!"
"That's because she didn't get to cancel the spell!" Ron whispered. "Guess this means she can't be the heir of Slytherin."
"Of course she's not!" Harry said. "Come on, we have to get help."
"But Harry, if you are found with another victim everyone will be after you for sure!" Ron said fearfully. "We can't exactly tell them we couldn't possibly have been involved because we were too busy impersonating Crabbe and Goyle in the Slytherin Common rooms! Snape would skin us alive!" He cried. "Aw bloody hell, Harry! It's Snape's niece! He's gonna kill us anyway!"
"Shut up Ron! Get a grip on yourself!" Harry snapped irritably. "We didn't do anything. I don't care what the school thinks, I'm not about to leave her. What if whatever did it comes back to finish her off?"
Ron paled. "H-h-h-harry! It might come back! We got to get out of here! Get a teacher!" He rambled. "How are we going to get her to the infirmary?"
Harry rolled his eyes and readied his wand. "Ron, light the way, I'm going to levitate her." He said, waiting until Ron had complied before he cancelled his light spell to free his wand up for the levitation charm. "Nox. Mobilicorpus."
By the time they reached the infirmary, Ron was a nervous wreck and Harry was sweating from the mental concentration of maintaining the levitation charm all that way.
"Madame Pomfrey!" Ron cried out hysterically as they crashed through the infirmary doors, only to stop in their tracks. "Hermione?"
Hermione looked up from one of the cots by the door where she was sitting awkwardly; having just been on the receiving end of one of Madame Pomfrey's lectures. "Harry? Ron? Oh my God is that Estella? She's been petrified!" She said all at once. "Look, her wands are still active! Everything has been completely preserved!"
"Oh dear Merlin!" Madame Pomfrey exclaimed, bustling into the ward to see the petrified child Harry had lowered onto a bed. "Step away children! Potter, tell me what happened! Granger, you send for Professor Dumbledore, Weasley, you go fetch Professor Snape, he will want to know this too."
Hermione scampered off without hesitation, but Ron froze in his tracks. "M-m-me?" He stammered, his voice a terrified squeak. "You want me to fetch Professor S-snape?"
"Oh buck up, Mr Weasley! You call yourself a Gryffindor!" Madame Pomfrey exclaimed. "Use the Floo in my office, I don't have time for nonsense now go!"
Ron cast Harry a 'I-told-you-we're-going-to-die' look and stumbled into the nurse's office, his hands shaking so badly as he pulled a handful of Floo Powder from the jar that he spilt it all over his robes and sneezed.
"Professor Snape!" He called into the fire, spluttering and sneezing as she summoned every ounce of Gryffindor courage he had.
"Weasley?" Professor Snape's voice bellowed questioningly in response – so loud that even the nurse and Harry could hear it from inside the infirmary. "What on earth are you doing in my fireplace?"
"It's Estella, Sir." Ron said quickly. "She's been p-petrified, Sir."
Professor Snape's voice changed, becoming almost choked. "Stand aside, boy! I'm coming through!" He said gruffly, giving Ron barely enough time to scamper back on his knees to avoid being bowled over by the Potion Master's sweeping stride as the man practically dove through the Floo.
"Poppy!" Severus roared. "Where is my niece!"
"Right here, Severus." Madame Pomfrey said forlornly. "Messieurs Potter and Weasley brought her in not five minutes ago. It's just like with the others."
Severus ignored the woman's sympathetic ministrations, his eyes fixated on the petrified form of his niece. With both wands at the ready, she had evidently put up a fight. The look of frozen terror on her face, however, was something Severus knew would haunt him for the rest of his days. Falling heavily into the seat by her bedside that Harry had smartly vacated, Severus ran a sweaty hand over his face.
"Where did you find her?" He said in a tone so foreign, the boy he was speaking to had a hard time locating its source.
"I-in the corridor past the stairs to the Dungeons." Harry answered softly. "She was already on the floor. Ron tripped over her. We would have sent for a teacher but we didn't know if whatever did this was still around or not."
"Harry levitated her all the way here." Ron added helpfully. "While I lit the way with my wand."
"Well what do you want, a medal?" Severus spat bitterly. "I'd tell you to get out, but the headmaster will likely want a word."
"Boys, why don't you come wait with me in my office? Professor Snape would like some time alone with his niece."
The boys nodded numbly and allowed the nurse to guide them into her office.
Standing so he could lean over his niece's body to study her face intently, Severus rested his hands on either side of her face. Releasing a shaky breath he didn't realise he'd been holding, he gazed into her teary eyes, searching for any sign of response.
"Oh Estella." His voice cracked, in a shadow of a whisper as he rested his forehead against Estella's brow. "I'm so sorry, child."
The days melted into weeks, and a new term began. Severus still refused to leave Estella's bedside, having accepted Dumbledore's offer to hire a substitute in favour of spending his every waking moment talking and reading to Estella. At night he'd sit and stare at Estella's lifeless eyes as they twinkled in the twilight, falling asleep at some point in the small hours with his body twisted in unnatural positions in the chair.
Each time he fell asleep, however, he dreamt. Nightmarish visions of Estella's petrified state when he had retrieved her infant form blurred and morphed into her present state of stasis. In his nightmare he didn't get to take Estella home with him that day because he was classed 'unsuitable', implying that the freshly burning image of her 11 year old form lying there scared stiff was how she'd spent her whole life.
Waking fitfully each and every time with the dream ending the same way – Severus lost in a dark corridor in Azkaban unable to find his niece and save her from being petrified her whole life, surrounded by the cold darkness that haunted her subconscious still – Severus was assaulted each and every new day with deeper resolve and realisation. He had been raising Estella for the past 11 years and yet he had never told her how he felt. Hell, he didn't even know how he felt. Estella was doing more to him that just fulfilling the initial intention of filling the void in his life that Selina's betrayal and death had left, and he didn't know how to deal with it. Faced with losing his child for the second time, Severus realised whole heartedly that Estella had his heart in her hands. His life would be forfeit without her. She was his very reason for living.
And she didn't even know it.
Slowly, the winter's snow thawed to make way for Spring. Severus, who had since been convinced to at least sleep in a cot by Estella's bed and freshen himself up with a real shower and set of clean clothes each day, was insisting upon daily updates on the Mandrakes' development from Professor Sprout. He had also taken to conducting infirmary bound meetings with his relief staff – a young Potions Apprentice from Denmark by the name of Clive Adler – to discuss lesson plans and teaching strategy; and reading through essays in the dark of night.
Professor Dumbledore had urged him to start teaching again, maintaining that Estella was in no immediate danger and that there was nothing to do but wait until the Mandrakes were mature enough to be harvested; but Severus was having none of it. Too often in the past, Estella had felt set aside by his teaching commitments and he was going to be damned if he let her wait out the long months until the remedy was ready alone. If he had just been open with her and not pushed her away she wouldn't have even been alone in that corridor in the first place.
After Creevey and Estella, a Hufflepuff second year and fifth year Ravenclaw were added to the list of petrifications, as well as one of the Gryffindor trio themselves, Hermione Granger. Unfortunately for Severus, this meant he had to contend with a daily vigil of loyal Hufflepuffs, precocious Ravenclaws and protective Gryffindors hovering at their respective housemate's bedside day in and day out. Yet while he thought the omnipresence of the likes of Potter and Weasley would grate at his nerves, it warmed him to know just how many of them cared for Estella and were genuinely concerned for her. Before Granger had been petrified, he'd even caught Potter under an invisibility cloak sneaking in after hours to check on his niece. For a matter of survival, a temporary amnesty was called – their respective decisions to set aside their classroom animosity reached completely autonomously and unspoken – as both sides tolerated being in the same room with each other by simply failing to acknowledge the other was even there.
Draco, too, had taken to visiting on a regular basis. Severus suspected that the blonde-haired Slytherin loitered in the shadows of the corridor outside (or had one of his minions scout out the scene for him) until the other students left because the boy had an almost uncanny knack of timing. Quite often he brought with him words of support and concern from Lucius and Narcissa – the pair most likely out to protect their own deranged interests. Draco, however, Severus could not easily read. He was particularly surprised when the pale blonde boy suggested that someone fetch Estella's magical Muggle Music box from her trunk 'to give her something to listen to at least'.
Estella's friends, meanwhile, had pooled their combined resources to ensure Estella did not fall behind in her classes. Amongst the study group Estella had formed, her classmates had drawn up a flawless, regimented schedule by which study partners and friends from her respective classes would sit and read class notes and assigned readings to her on a rotational basis. Severus couldn't help but marvel at the ingenuity of the student's time management skills. Somehow they managed to vary the timing of each student's obligated visit and distribute the class work so evenly amongst themselves that not only was Estella never without a guest (before curfew anyway), but each of the students that diligently informed Estella of what she was missing out on did so at a pace that they never tired of, that never imposed on their own social time or study or extra curricular involvements.
So, as it were, like clockwork, fellow Ravenclaws Reginald Davies and John Ryan would spend Monday lunchtime and Thursday after classes reviewing their work in Herbology. Gryffindor Victoria Frobisher and Estella's roommate Elsie Carmichael would visit during lunch on Fridays and Tuesday after classes to keep Estella up to date in her Charms work. A Hufflepuff by the name of Ophelia Cauldwell would come with a Muggleborn Ravenclaw called Allegra Chambers to tell Estella how much she wasn't missing out on in Defence Against The Dark Arts during Lunch on Tuesdays. Another Gryffindor, Kendra Towler – whose older brother Severus noted amongst the more promising of his fourth year students – rounded up the little conscientious group of friends as they divided the remaining subjects between them diligently. They had Estella's time so well mapped out, that Severus felt his lips twitching when Reginald – half way through describing a star chart during a Astronomy tutorial – snapped at the loitering boy-who-lived and told him to schedule his 'social' visit after dinner when 'miscellaneous' guests were permitted so as to not interfere with Estella's 'learning' at other times of the day.
Although Severus worked towards keeping his mask of 'greasy git' potions master in place when they were around him and his niece, he could not help but appreciate these hard working, caring students on a whole different level. Unbeknownst to them – and in fact everyone in the school save Dumbledore – Severus kept a ledger of every student who visited Estella, covertly awarding five points to their respective houses each and every time they appeared. Short of actually vocalising his appreciation to them, it was the closest they were going to get to acknowledgement and Severus didn't care if the mysteriously appearing extra points were the School's latest conspiracy that the staff and students would never think to attribute it to him; all that mattered was that he knew… and Estella too, if she was listening.
No more secrets.
End Chapter: Scared Stiff