Balance: by rabbit
Disclaimer: Tisn't mine, tis true. Thanks to Ozma for her Squib Doors (yes, you should go read her stories, now!—er, well, just as soon as you read mine, anyway), Jinx for people and other things, Ariana Deralte for her Uric the Oddball, and JKRowling who started it all...
Chapter 20: Heads of House
Summary: We want four, we've got three, we need one...
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Harry stayed with McGonagall and Snape. Draco wasn't really steady enough yet to be a good support for the Potions professor, especially not with Snape still in chainmail, and McGonagall seemed to be glad of Harry's company. Woodwalker cleared a path for them to the most protected corner of the room. Dumbledore's bed must have been moved there while they were still out in the storm.
Several of the teachers they passed greeted McGonagall or Snape, some of them with cool disdain and some with a nod of the head, or a small bow. Harry was startled to see Professor Lockhart tucked under a nearby bed, tied hand and foot with an elaborate scarf, and gagged with his own hat.
A young, exhausted-looking Pomfrey met them at the foot of an oversized bed, where Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick were tucked in alongside of Dumbledore, one at each hand, and two more people, a witch and a wizard that Harry didn't know, sat at his feet and his head. Dumbledore himself looked like a pale shadow against the pillow. He looked his full age to Harry, or more. His silver beard spread across the coverlet, still tangled with small sticks and matted in places with mud or worse. After a long, frightening moment, Harry began to discern the slight movements which signalled that Dumbledore was still breathing.
For now.
"I was beginning to think you'd never get here," Pomfrey cried, bursting into tears as she burrowed against McGonagall's shoulder, and then lower against her side as the years fell away.
"It's all right," McGonagall said, patting the sobbing girl on the back.. "It's all right, Poppy. You've done well. And Severus has a trick or two up his sleeve. Don't you, Professor Snape?"
Snape raised an incredulous eyebrow at McGonagall, who shrugged a little, coloring up. Pomfrey, who had gone quite young, looked up at Snape, scrubbing at her face with her hand and frowning. "Are you a mediwizard?"
"No." Snape said, soberly. "But I can help." He reached into his pockets for the potion vials that Filch had brought him.
"Thee should be takin' thy help to the wee sma' mon, then I'm thinkin'," a watching witch in a plaid robe said sourly. "Or there willna be enow left o' Ravenclaw to hatch afresh." She stepped forward and picked up Flitwick, passing him to Woodwalker before taking his place on the bed. "Don't ye be wastin' time at it," she ordered, and closed her eyes.
As Woodwalker turned to Snape, Harry got a good look at the Flitwick, and he was appalled. There were bruises everywhere, and where there weren't bruises there were bandages. Harry thought Woodwalker seemed surprised by the fragility of his sudden burden – at any rate he was getting younger, and Harry hastened to help support the little Charms Professor in case the wizard from the past disappeared again.
Snape must have thought of that too, because he signalled Draco to help as well. Just in time. Woodwalker flickered for a moment and vanished. A small boy with a brown braid and a Hufflepuff badge on his cloak stepped into his place. "You need more badgers," the child observed solemnly, as he helped support the injured teacher. "The ones in the walls are hiding."
"There are badgers in the walls?" Draco asked incredulously, adjusting his grip to ease his sore arm. Harry was grateful for the Hufflepuff's help. Draco was still a little green, to tell the truth, and with his hair disarrayed by the rain and wind, he looked oddly frail, like a bedraggled dandelion.
"Only some of them," the boy, who was getting taller rapidly, was undaunted by Draco's disbelief. He craned his long neck to study the potion that Snape was tipping carefully into Flitwick's mouth. He sniffed. "Wouldn't that be better with a more concentrated solution of daisyroot?"
"Not in combination with this," Snape murmured, bringing out the second potion as Flitwick shuddered painfully and opened his eyes. "Filius, what hurts?"
"All..." Flitwick said, holding himself quite still after that first uncontrolled movement.
"I've got HealWell salve," Snape said. "We'll let the Restorus potion work for a minute, and we'll start with the worst of it," he promised while Draco counted out the seconds.
"It works really well," Harry told the Charms professor, hoping to distract the small man while Snape stripped aside the nightshirt and bandages to reveal the damage. It was horrible. "When we were outside, in the storm, it fixed Professor Snape right up. You'll feel a lot better soon." As he lost height, Harry had to hold his arms higher, to keep Flitwick level.
"You're prattling, Potter," Snape pointed out, mildly for him.
"HealWell salve, HealWell salve," the Hufflepuff man said. "But how did you get the unicorn liver? Or did you use phoenix egg?"
"Someone had been killing unicorns," Snape said. "In the forest, for the blood. The Groundskeeper frightened them off before they could eviscerate the last one." Snape tipped a few drops of the second potion onto Flitwick's face, and the bruises and swelling faded. "Given how seldom phoenixes lay eggs, Dumbledore gave me permission to use the liver." As he spoke, he portioned out more of the careful drops. Harry could see the lump of a misplaced rib move back into place.
"I remember that," Draco said, watching the effects of the potion with equal fascination. "But won't using pieces of unicorn mean that the people who use the salve will be cursed? For hurting a unicorn, I mean?"
"It would," Snape said, absently, "were I in any way responsible for the death of the unicorn." He peered at the vial, and then cast a grim glance around at the many beds. "Hopefully, there will be enough of this to go around. What else hurts, Filius?"
"My back. You'll have to tend it, Severus. I shan't be able to dance, otherwise." Flitwick said apologetically. He sounded better than he had, though, and he was smiling.
Harry replayed the last few bits of conversation in his head as they turned Flitwick so that Snape could attend to the damage on the back, trying not to think about how much less fragile Flitwick seemed on the healed half. Less like a bag of broken sticks. He hadn't known that Dumbledore had found a way to use the dead unicorn. And Fawkes was a boy phoenix, so he couldn't lay eggs, could he? "Wait a minute. Fawkes! Can't we get Fawkes to heal the people who are hurt? At least some of them?"
"Fawkes is dead," Professor Trelawney said, from just behind Harry's shoulder, and he had to keep himself from jumping. "At least, for the moment. But as the wizard, so the familiar, you know, so the bird should recover nicely once Albus does."
"Hello, Sybill," Snape said. "Your timing is, as usual, alarming. Make yourself useful and get Filius something decent to wear, will you?"
"Says the man who converses in freighted ellipses," Trelawney answered with a raised eyebrow. "I've brought you a fresh robe, Filius. I foresaw the need."
"Thank you," Flitwick said. He sounded much steadier now, if a little muffled by being held upside down.
"Are divination spells working, then?" Snape asked. "Charms aren't, at least not out there. And I'm not entirely sure why potions are."
"Because they were here already," said the Hufflepuff, who had gotten quite a bit older. "Like clothes. My clothes like to change with me. But yours stay the same and make you look silly." He cocked his head, now crowned with an embroidered tea cosy, ignoring Snape's glare as he listened to something no one else could hear. "I have to go now. Hold tight."
With the warning, Harry was just able to shift position enough to support Flitwick's head when the Hufflepuff vanished.
"It's all right, boys," Flitwick mumbled into Harry's shirt. "I think I can stand on my own now."
Draco and Harry put the Charms Professor down gently and stepped back to let Trelawney help him into the spare robes. Snape went over to the bed, where McGonagall had taken the place of the wizard who had been at Dumbledore's head.
"Who's going to hold Albus while we work?" he asked, nodding to the witch at the foot of the bed who nodded back and conceded her place to him before vanishing three steps away. "Once we draw the circle, those within must be reliable."
"I've been thinking about that," Professor Sprout said. "And I believe it will have to be current students. They vary the least. Choose them from a year that we know hasn't graduated yet."
McGonagall opened her eyes, looking straight to Harry. "Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy have been consistent." she said. "Students from their year will suit the purpose."
"I suggest Susan Bones to stand for Hufflepuff, then," said Sprout. "She's steady, and stubborn and she knows how to dig in."
"And I," said Flitwick, climbing back onto the bed and tapping the shoulder of the witch who'd taken his place. "ask that you fetch Lisa Turpin to hold my place for Ravenclaw. Her natural curiosity will fix her to the task, no matter how strange."
"I'll get them! I'll get them!" cried Professor Trelawney, who was probably about twelve now, "I know just where they are!" She turned and darted through the crowd towards the student tables with her skirts held high, caroling the girls' names for everyone to hear.
"You truly don't need a loudspeaker with her about, do you?" offered a thin, bespectacled witch drily, and the kind of nervous laughter that interrupts a tense situation rippled through those close enough to hear her.
Amid the brief splash of amusement, a short wizard with the face of an elderly chimpanzee and a long thin beard appeared near the corner of the bed. Harry froze. The last time he'd seen that face it had been on a giant statue in the Chamber of Secrets.