Reviewers: Infall, thanks as always for your support and praise. It means a lot. :D Angel, thanks for being my extra set of eyes (I fixed the arthritis cream remark in Ch. 10) and for being so inspirational. Parvati sings the first verse of your Snape song in this chapter, and I was so inspired by your song that it became the basis for a Gryffindor Snape prank. Hee! Kiwi, you rock, you're basically one of my de facto betas on this, and you're certainly not dumb --- the Ron thing was completely my error. The reason it was confusing was because I had him say the wrong spell! I went back and fixed that. Thank you also for pointing out the weirdness of Harry's weirdness, as it were, in Ch. 11. I fixed that, too. As to Snape being a bat animagus, that's a really interesting theory. I'm just glad the security bat concept didn't strike you as stupid. Huzzah! And you will get Hermione's POV on Harry's exposed body parts, just not in this chapter. LOL Shiba, you rule. "The healing." LOL I'm still laughing, man. That was genius. Thank you so much for coming back to the story, and I'm glad you're still enjoying, even though that last update was unbearably late. IAm, thank you so much for your continued support. I'm glad you like this!

Notes:

1) I hereby credit Angel Princess Stephanie for her lovely contribution to this chapter. See Reviewer notes above.

2) As I do not advocate Harry torture, the following was very hard to write. :o(

CHAPTER TWELVE: Hell

By Thursday evening, half the school knew about Snape. By Friday morning, the entire school knew about Snape. So it was only natural that the two biggest gossips in Gryffindor would have something to say about it. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown were on their way to Transfiguration when Parvati burst into song.

"Alas my dear Professor," she warbled, "feeling the need to escape, now known as a transgressor, named Master …"

Parvati paused for effect and Lavender laughed. Then suddenly Lavender's eyes got very big.

"Oooh, Vati, you just gave me a marvelous idea! And it will make Transfiguration slide by!"

Parvati looked at Lavender with something like worry. Admittedly, neither of the two girls was the brightest fairy-light on the tree, but Parvati at least knew enough to be concerned whenever Lavender had a "marvelous idea."

This couldn't be anything good.

Harry had turned to Ron for a moment at breakfast when something cold touched his fingers. He looked ahead again. Hermione put his goblet in his hand, full of cold pumpkin juice. He gulped it down and waited impatiently for Hermione and Ron to finish so they could all walk to Transfiguration together. Glancing at Hermione quickly, he saw that her hair was sepia brown, as was the rest of the world – not black-and-white like last night, but not colorized, either. Things were somewhere in between.

There was a quiz in Transfiguration today (changing a mole into a molehill) and since it was the first class after breakfast Harry knew he should be concentrating on that. But his mind was elsewhere; he was wholly consumed with what had happened last night. Someone had stolen all his ingredients, which meant that someone knew he was making Fizz. But the thief hadn't reported him, so he figured the selfish sleazeball who raided his dorm was hoarding the ingredients somewhere, probably cooking up a batch of elixir right now.

His heart was beating very fast. Not from anger or passion, of course. It was simply his body's way of telling him that it was extremely unhappy about the lack of Fizz. Worse, he was quivering constantly. Robes could hide a lot of things, but he needed to stick his hand out to wave his wand in Transfiguration, and someone was bound to notice that it wasn't steady at all. There had been no drink this morning upon waking up, and no sip at breakfast. He wasn't sure how he was going to manage today. He decided to walk as far ahead of Hermione and Ron as he could without being rude. Perhaps, he thought, if he didn't get too close to them, they wouldn't be able to tell anything was wrong.

The trio was in sight of the classroom when all thoughts of Transfiguration, Fizz, and his friends flew out of Harry's head, pushed out by a strong urge to use the restroom. He actually felt his bladder getting bigger and bigger, expanding like an inflating balloon. Shaking uncontrollably and feeling like he was going to soil himself any moment, he turned to his friends and tightly said, "Tell McGonagall I'll be late. Please."

Hermione and Ron watched as he clumsily made haste to the boys' room down the hall. Harry never saw Hermione's grim smile.

"Good," she said. "It's working."

"Yeah, good job getting it into his juice," Ron said distractedly. Then, "Hang on, what do you mean, 'it's working'? Is he going to be running to the loo every time he takes some?"

Hermione sighed. "Probably, and he'll feel very sick in-between. See, Perspectus Nova seeks out the toxins Fizz leaves behind in the blood, and renders them harmless. But that fight really takes its toll on the body. And the neutralized toxins and waste have to go somewhere, so PN deposits them in the digestive tract … none too gently." She finished with a wince.

Ron winced too. "He'll be doing that for two days? Bloody hell."

"If he complains, I'll suggest it's the stomach flu," Hermione said. "Besides, you know Harry. He'll be too proud, or too scared, to see Madame Pomfrey. We won't force his hand."

"So we're in the clear," Ron said.

"Hopefully."

Minerva McGonagall walked into the staff room at lunch, sat down on a chair and began to eat some soup she'd brought up with her from the Great Hall. A fire was blazing in the grate and a few other instructors were hanging about. Thaddeus Erring, the new Defense teacher, was sitting by the window reading a book and finishing a sandwich. Flitwick was stretched out on the couch (this wasn't saying much), napping with one arm slung over his eyes. Snape was sitting by the fire, marking essays and eating an apple.

McGonagall charmed her soup to levitate next to her and turned to Snape.

"Severus, we have a small problem."

"Pardon?" asked Snape, not even looking up from his paperwork. He took a bite of his apple and began to chew.

"It would seem that your little 'episode' Wednesday night is public knowledge," McGonagall said, taking a piece of parchment from her pocket. "I caught two of my students passing a note about you in class."

Snape looked up. "What?" he said through a mouthful of apple.

"Don't worry, I've punished them."

He swallowed and gathered his composure. "I'm afraid I'm a bit behind you. A note? About me?"

"It's a poem, actually. Sort of a round-robin. Different people have added different verses."

Snape snorted indignantly and went back to work. McGonagall didn't even ask him if he wanted to hear the poem, she knew he wouldn't. So she sat there chewing her lower lip for a moment, wondering what to do.

"Filius?" she finally asked the apparently sleeping Flitwick. "Would you care to hear it?"

"Delighted," the unmoving wizard replied immediately.

Snape brought his head up, a very sour look on his face.

"Excellent!" McGonagall said, and stood up. Erring, obviously eager to hear the poem, sat down next to Flitwick. Binns came floating through the wall, followed by Nearly-Headless Nick. And worse, Dumbledore picked that moment to walk in, followed by Professor Sinistra, who was chatting animatedly to Professor Vector about galactic constants in rune equations.

Snape's eyes began to dart, looking for an exit.

"Oh, hello all," said McGonagall pleasantly.

"Minerva," Dumbledore said kindly. He took a look at the gray sky outside and commented, "A fine day to spend lunchtime indoors, I think. What do you have there?"

"It's a rather nasty poem that some of my students wrote about Professor Snape."

"She's going to read it!" Erring announced cheerfully.

Dumbledore looked slightly surprised. "Minerva!"

"I have already punished those I knew to be involved with it, Albus."

Much to Snape's irritation, this seemed to satisfy Dumbledore and McGonagall began to read.

"One esteemed Professor thought

With drink he could escape.

Now he's a transgressor and

They call him Master …"

There was dead silence for a moment. McGonagall's lips twitched. Then suddenly Erring shouted, "Oh! 'Snape!'"

Snape gritted his teeth. McGonagall straightened her glasses and continued.

"Speaking ill is very wrong –

It's also highly risky.

But what a sight he must have been,

Face-down in his whiskey!

I bet he scores his essays drunk –

(He's really got a pair.)

But if it gets us better marks,

Then I don't bloody care.

It seems that awful, grouchy bat

Has got into a scrape.

If luck's with us he'll get the sack,

And goodbye Master Snape!"

By this point, the room was tittering. Snape looked like a storm cloud. He began to gather up his things.

"That is the worst poetry I have ever heard," he sneered.

"Oh I don't know, I rather liked it!" said McGonagall, bursting into laughter, accompanied by most of the gathered instructors.

Snape stood up majestically, his robes flapping, every line of his face radiating ire. McGonagall was fast to notice.

"Oh come now, Severus! We all know how stupid children can be. None of us actually believes this rubbish, you know."

Snape, unfortunately, was not persuaded. In one smooth motion he crossed the room, snatched the offending paper from McGonagall, and tossed it into the fireplace. "I," he announced haughtily, "have classes to teach. As do you, Professor. Good day."

He swept past her and left.

"Not a very happy man, is he?" asked Erring, once the door had shut behind him.

Flitwick sighed.

The rest of Friday was absolute hell for Harry. He was twitching worse than ever, his legs felt like jelly, he was sweating profusely, and he was attempting to hide it from his best friends – people who knew him very well. Hermione had asked him twice already if he was "quite all right." He couldn't let her ask again. He had to put up a better front.

But it was difficult. Harry had an awful stomachache, the beginnings of a matching headache, a terrible woozy feeling whenever he stood up, and a pressing need to use the restroom after every meal. Worse, whenever he did his business, it burned so awfully that after the fifth time he almost cried out.

Almost.

He was not about to show any pain or weakness to anybody. To admit something was wrong was to admit he'd done something foolish and illegal. To admit he'd done something foolish and illegal would be to admit he had a problem he could see no other way to deal with. And to admit that would be a terrible blow to his pride.

So he suffered in silence. He failed McGonagall's quiz, guzzled his pumpkin juice at lunch (anything to re-hydrate), spent Herbology completely out-of-it with one quivering hand on his distressed and distended tummy, and waited for the final carillon at half-past-three.

After another stop in the bathroom at four, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looked white as a sheet, but he looked … white. The world, he noticed, was beginning to lighten ever so slightly. The color was gently seeping back into things. His round glasses, for instance, were a firm black, not the maybe-black of a few hours ago.

Of course, this was little comfort when he felt so tired and ill. He considered speaking to Madame Pomfrey, but quickly banished the thought. If she found out he was suffering the effects of withdrawl from Fizz (because Harry had finally figured out what this was), he would be in some serious trouble. There was nothing for it but to square his shoulders and shut up.

Midnight on Friday found Snape and Dumbledore deep in the bowels of Hogwarts investigating Cavern 32, fending off small insects and looking for Snape's colony of pipistrelles. As much as the students called Snape things like a "great bat," comments the professor stoutly ignored, he had always gotten on quite well with the flying creatures. It was a natural result of spending so much time in the dungeons. (The belfries of Hogwarts had been overtaken by the owls and so the bats had "gone underground," so to speak.) Snape had kept his colony here for safety and convenience.

Reaching them, however, was another matter. The going was slow. Dumbledore wasn't a fast walker and soon they were up to their calves in bat guano, anyway. Both men had swapped their usual sweeping robes for Muggle clothes. Everything Snape wore, from his turtle neck top to his flat-front trousers to his knee-high boots, was a functional black. Dumbledore, however, had selected a ghastly yellow polka-dot jumper, red rain boots, and plus-fours in a shocking shade of green.

Finally, however, they located the colony, all roosting together in a cozy corner of the cavern. Upon their arrival, the bats' began to chitter and screech. Snape knew it was because they probably recognized him (he'd been down here last month to check up on them). But the bats quickly turned annoyed and began to flap about. Snape figured it was the Headmaster's clothing choice. Hell, it annoyed him from fifty yards.

"Well, here we are," Snape said.

"So it would seem," said Dumbledore. His eyes were watering a bit – the smell in here was overpowering.

He looked this way and that, shining his headlamp on the walls. (Each of the wizards had charmed a lumos flare to hover just above his eyes for hands-free navigation.) He and Snape both took care not to shine his light directly at the bats. It was bound to annoy them further, and they needed their cooperation.

"Again, Headmaster, I appreciate you coming," Snape said sincerely.

"No trouble, Severus," Dumbledore replied evenly as he forgot to look down and stepped heavily into a pile of moist, warm guano. "Let's catch some bats, shall we?"

Snape nodded. But as it turned out, "catching some bats" was quite a tall order. Even after his initial kindness to these animals and reading his bat book cover to cover, Snape had quite a job of communicating with them. He let out repeated high screeches, and while they were rather hilarious on some level, they were not really getting the bats' attention. In fact, he could tell that some of the pipistrelles were actively ignoring him.

"Impudent little beasts," he growled. "So rude! Hmm. Maybe if I try …" he screeched again.

This time, he got a response.

So, after an hour of standing in a dark cave and having a screeching conversation, Snape had a raw throat, but also something approaching an answer. He wearily turned to Dumbledore, who was leaning against the cavern wall and reading a book.

"News?" he asked, looking up.

"A bit," Snape wheezed. "It seems the two bats on duty Wednesday night are off hunting in another part of the cavern. I've asked one of these to seek them out."

At Snape's words, one lone pipistrelle flew away from the colony.

"Excellent," said Dumbledore. "We may get to the bottom of this, yet."

In retrospect, Snape figured, he could probably blame that last sentence of Dumbledore's for what happened next. He jinxed the whole thing!

First of all, it took nearly an hour for the two bats in question to return, following the scout bat. By then it was nearly two o'clock in the morning. After a long day of teaching and administrating, respectively, Snape was yawning and Dumbledore's eyes were at half-mast. Finally, the three bats flew back into the cavern.

Snape had the fortune to witness the return. He calmly pointed his wand at the three returning creatures, and said "Cromo diversae!"

The bats he pointed at immediately began to glow green. They stuck out like sore thumbs against the darkness of the cavern and the mass of the other bats. They also didn't seem to notice the spell cast on them, flapping around as usual and trying to find a spot to settle and hang upside-down. But the rest of the colony was alarmed at this strange magic. Something had happened to their compatriots, and the hook-nosed man with the wooden stick was responsible.

One bat, obviously a leader of the colony, let out a screech that sounded alarmingly like a bat war cry … and all hell broke loose.

Albus Dumbledore was quickly reduced to shivering heap of giggles as a colony of furious, tiny bats loudly pursued a rather frightened Severus Snape all over the cavern, until the Potions Master tripped over a rock and went face-first into an enormous pile of bat shit.

It was after three by the time the bats had calmed down, Snape had cleaned up, and Dumbledore finally managed to hit the appropriate bats with a sleeping charm. The little creatures were flapping about at the time. They fell asleep mid-flight and dropped out of the air like stones into Snape's outstretched hands.

Both men were tired from a long day. Dumbledore was in no shape to Legilimize a bat without hurting it. Snape was feeling most put-out at having his bats chase him around, and his cleaning charm hadn't been terribly effective, so he stank to high heaven. Dumbledore offered to do another, but Snape just glared at him sourly. The elder wizard took the blatant social cue and backed off.

Snape turned his gaze on the three little bats he held gently in his hands. The one on the left, an elderly bat, was sleeping quietly. The one on the right, a middle-aged bat, was twitching its nose. And the bat in the middle, quite young by the looks of its coloring, was snoring loudly with its mouth open and its tongue hanging out.

In some dim corner of his mind, Snape found the sight rather cute. Then he shook his head to clear it. These creatures were tools, a means to an end. He handed the bats to Dumbledore.

"I will take these bats with me to my study," Dumbledore said. "Tomorrow morning we can wake them up and I will Legilimize them. Be in my office at eleven a.m. Will you?"

Snape yawned. "Yes, sir. Come on, then. I need a shower."

"That you do, my boy," said Dumbledore, cradling the bats. "That you do."

Snape looked annoyed. They trudged off through the muck and made their way out of the cavern.

Saturday was not a good day. In fact, Harry thought, if Friday was bad, then this had to be ten times worse. With no classes to occupy him and lots of homework to do, time stretched before him in an endless wasteland of pain, work, and general misery. He decided to confine himself to his dorm room and study instead of practicing Quidditch with Ron and the rest of the team. He had a lot of work to do, and besides, he needed to be close to a bathroom. He only left the tower for meals. At breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he forced himself to drink all the pumpkin juice Hermione offered him. It seemed to get the worried expression off her face, if only for a little while.

But holding in the pain didn't make it stop. His stomachache from yesterday had become unbearable. His limbs, while they had stopped twitching quite so much, were aching fiercely, the pain radiating from somewhere deep inside his bones. He was dizzy all the time, and frankly glad that his feeble excuse of "homework, you know," had gotten Ron off his back about practicing. He didn't know what he would do on a broom today.

"Probably kill myself," he mused darkly.

By late afternoon, he was stiff and sore and tired from focusing what little attention he could muster on his studies. Taking a break from studying Transfiguration, he glanced out his dormitory window at the blue sky. Hang on …

The sky was blue. Harry looked down at his hands. They were the same light peachy color they'd always been. His shirt was red, with black stripes. His trousers were gray. His socks were white.

The world, for whatever reason, had gone colors again, and for a moment Harry's mind filled up completely with this fact. He forgot all about the pain for a minute or two.

It came back with a vengeance after dinner. By evening Harry was barely able to stand, let alone make conversation, but he had to do both. It was a Hogsmeade weekend, and most of Gryffindor tower was heading out for the night. At eight o'clock, the common room was packed with departing students. The sixth and seventh-years looked slightly blasé about it, the fifth-years looked nervous, and the fourth and third-years were chattering excitedly. The second and first-years, already in bed, were absent from the crowd.

Harry looked around to see who was staying and who was leaving. It turned out nearly everyone from his year was going out. Seamus, Dean, and Neville were dressed nicely and preparing to escort a gussied-up Lavender, Parvati, and Ginny, respectively. Ron looked slightly displeased at the Neville-Ginny thing and was eyeing the pudgy, sweet-tempered boy with his patented "If you hurt my baby sister I'll do something unspeakable to you" glare. Neville gulped.

Ron and Hermione were chatting with the others but dressed in their pajamas. They clearly intended to stay in. Harry was still in his day clothes, minus his shoes, but he had no plans to go out tonight, certainly not feeling as ill as he did.

"Coming, Harry?" Seamus asked.

"No, no, I don't think so," said Harry. "Work, you know."

Seamus waved him off in a friendly manner, took Parvati's arm, and guided her out of the portrait hole. Everyone left, and Harry did his best to smile and wave as they went, although his hand was not steady and his smile came out as more of a grimace.

Finally the last students disappeared through the portrait hole and it closed, revealing that Harry, Ron, and Hermione seemed to be the only upper classmen left in Gryffindor Tower.

"I do believe this qualifies us as losers," Ron said casually, shuffling over to the roaring fire and sitting down on the fuzzy rug before it. "Chess?" he asked, digging his set out from under one of the couches.

"Why aren't you two going?" Harry asked quietly, sitting down gingerly across from Ron.

Hermione had curled up on the couch and begun to read. She peeked at him over the top of her book.

"We have more important things to do," she said in an even tone.

Harry had no idea what she meant by that. Rather than dwell on it, he faced Ron and prepared to lose spectacularly, as usual; anything to take his mind off his aching belly and his throbbing everything else. After ten minutes of chess, it became apparent that this wasn't working.

Perhaps a shower would help. Harry let Ron kick his arse all over the chessboard, stood up carefully, and began to toddle up the stairs.

"Harry, where are you going?" asked Ron.

"Grab a shower," Harry said tightly, unconsciously clutching his stomach with one hand. "See you in a bit."

Harry walked up the stairs with agonizing slowness and into the dormitory. As soon as Hermione heard the click of the door closing, she closed her book. Ron was staring at her.

"You gave him the last of the potion at dinner, right?" he said.

"Yes."

"Well, what happens now?"

"I told you," Hermione replied. "An explosion of some sort. The book wasn't clear on what's supposed to happen, though. We should be ready for anything. In fact," she continued, putting down her book, "I'll get some supplies ready. Something tells me this won't be pleasant."

She went up to her room, leaving Ron alone in front of the fire.

Harry was rinsing off the soap when it hit him. The wave of nausea was so powerful it practically knocked him over. Nude, he staggered out of the still running shower, fell to his knees in front of the toilet, and began to heave. After twenty agonizing minutes that stretched into infinity, his stomach was finally empty. He felt his knees pressing uncomfortably on the cold marble floor. His arms were limp around the toilet bowl. He breathed hard and swiped his sweaty forehead against his arm to dry it.

For a brief second, he thought it was over.

And then, horrors, he felt something terribly painful hurtling through him, trying to get out the other end.

The only reasonable thing Harry could do was switch positions, which he did. He managed to seat himself on the commode just in time. But after two days of an upset stomach and all the vomiting just now, this was too much to handle. His abdominal muscles felt like they were splitting apart. His lungs were on fire. Whatever was worming its way out of him was yanking on every nerve. The pain was so awful that he bit the inside of his cheek and soon had blood running out from between his clenched teeth and down his chin. Sweat began to mingle with the lingering drops of water on him.

He didn't make a sound.

And finally, an excruciating half hour later, it was over. Harry was done in. Weak, exhausted, unsteady, dehydrated, and still in terrible pain, he sagged slightly to the left. Gravity did the rest. He fell off the toilet, hit the floor, and landed limply on his side. The hard slap of flesh against marble made a sickening thwack.

And that was when he realized that no one was coming for him. He licked his suddenly chapped lips as the world slid in and out of focus, spat and dribbled blood, and perversely pondered what it would be like to die like this, naked and cold on the bathroom floor, within shouting distance of his friends. What would the Prophet's headline read? Probably "Boy-Who-Lived Lives No More."

Or perhaps, he thought morosely, "Teenager Blows Everything He Ever Ate Out His Arse, Dies As Result."

God, his arse hurt. God, he thought, everything hurt – his limbs, his sphincters, his muscles, his bones, his brain, his very soul.

Everything hurt so terribly.

That was his last coherent thought before his arms and legs began to flop wildly, completely out of his control. His breath turned shallow and rapid as muscles he didn't even know he had constricted in his chest. His heart was going a mile-a-minute. Even his neck got in on the action, arching up in repeated spasms so bad that his head snapped back and repeatedly connected with the base of the toilet behind him. There was an odd rushing in his ears …

And it went off like a shot. All the things he'd tried to contain for the past three weeks came pouring out. Everything – pain, joy, breath – was flung out of him in a mighty whoosh of air and wild magic, accompanied by a loud, terrified noise that emanated from his burning chest and thrashed vocal chords.

Harry hadn't screamed like that since June.

He twitched one more time, curling into a gentle fetal position. Then his limbs went limp and slapped onto the tile. The moonlight pouring in through the charmed window striped a bar of light across his pale form. He lay there, deathly still, on the cold marble floor.

TBC