I have FINALLY got this chapter up and ready to go. I know that my tenses are all over the place in the chapter, but when I was writing it I sort of went with the flow, so no flames about that please...
This chapter is dedicated to all those out there who feel that Harry and Snape shouldget along at least every once in a while...
Silent moonlight slices through a gap in the curtains, illuminating a bed. A little is left over, however. Enough to show an empty chair and that the bed is occupied. At one point, some seventy-two hours ago, these lungs had given up all claim to oxygen. Now they move up and down with a slow and steady increase. A thin sound escapes this figure's lips.
This part of the hospital wing has been completely sealed off, for the peace and the quiet. A certain redhead and know-it-all have been to visit six or seven times, but now it is empty save its single occupant.
The door at the end of the room creaks open ponderously, letting in a cake-slice of orange, flickering light. A man, leaning heavily on a crutch, enters, and carefully closes the door behind him.
He limps over to the boy's bed, pauses. Everything seems to be fine.
He carries on to a bed a little further down, and sits heavily on it. He appears to fish around in a drawer in a bedside table, finds what he's looking for, and stands up again, not without some effort. He begins to limp back the way he came.
A low noise comes from the boy's bed.
The man freezes to the spot, eyes attached to the thin frame.
It's the witching hour, the abyss of night... who knows what horrors plague the subconscious of those unfortunate enough to have shaken Death by the bony hand?
This boy does. It's not pleasant. The man knows this, and he waits for fully six minutes to see if there are any other signs of movement.
The moon says it cannot be past one a.m.
The still figure moves a little, but the watcher interprets this as normal and resumes his walk to the other end of the room.
The once-prone figure mumbles something, and shifts slightly. He has woken these last few days, but not so he will remember. The brief interludes between the nightmares and sleep are not something his brain will allow him to recall clearly. His body needs time to recover, he needs time for his bones, blood and flesh to purge his system of everything that was poured into it... poisons, pain and bad memories.
The memories are proving a little difficult. Perhaps they're a lot more permanent than the brain will realise. Some things are not meant to be erased.
The movement is beyond flickers now. The arm replays scenes only it can remember and twitches violently, memory of some curse damaging the central nervous system, perhaps. No more sound escapes, but that is not important now. Breathing increases rapidly. From lungs that had once developed an allergy to air, they are working with terrible efficiency.
The man has stopped again, but there is the posture: he is less frozen and more reluctant to turn around. He knows what to expect, but he does not know how to handle it. Moonlight highlights his face as he turns a little, casting all his features into sharp relief. His expression is fierce. His stance is uncertain. Long black hair frames his face, making a sharp contrast of black on white.
The moon is round, full and white. It gives off much more light than needed.
The boy in the bed moans very, very slightly. It sounds as if it is being forcibly silenced. The still man puts two and two together as Harry rolls out of bed.
He stands up, leaning at a crazy angle, and throws an arm out to the wall to steady himself. He looks completely disorientated, and takes a few steps toward the opposite end of the ward, stumbling and reeling blindly. Sweat glistens in the moonlight, illuminates his gaunt frame and his bandages. His torso is bare save for the linen strips, and he is wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms. That is it. He takes another step forward and sinks down to his knees. Snape starts forward, hurrying as fast as his crutch will allow him.
"Lights," he snaps, and the room is immediately soaked in warm yellow light. Snape drops his crutch and follows it down to his knees. He takes Potter by the shoulders and shakes him a little.
"Potter! It is only a dream! It cannot hurt you!"
But he knows, even as he says this, that it is not true. Dreams can hurt so much, where it is too deep and too buried to be show a scar. During the night, however... any mental block that holds them is gone. Any semblance of self melts away, exposing these bitter memories. And once they begin to play, there is no telling what damage they can do.
Potter has his face in his hands, and he is shaking. Snape finds his shoulders icy cold to the touch. "Potter," he repeats.
Potter does not change. He is hunched over, hiding his face in his hands like a child who believes that if something is not seen it is not real. He is trembling from cold and from terror.
This... this child looks so alone. So isolated. So cut off from the rest of humanity. Loneliness is a terrible thing that chips away at a person's soul until there is nothing left but a sprinkling of dust on the floor of a vast cavern. What people do not realise is that souls can form again, but it takes a long time.
This boy is sixteen. He has taken death, he has looked at the scythe and lived to tell the tale more than once. What haunted him then was that others hadn't. What haunts him now is the memory of pain and torture, of high-pitched laughter and persecutors. His brain replays every single curse, every single second of red eyes taking pleasure in his pain. This is too much. A man would be dead by now, a child would be lost. Harry is somewhere in between.
Snape looks out of the window, through the slit of space between the curtains. It is a crystal clear night, much unlike the night in which he had found this boy. It had been stormy, snow had covered everything from masonry to bodies. If you put your foot in something squishy you just kept going and didn't look down, he remembers.
He'd returned to find Potter gone, about an hour later, as soon as he got out of the Death Revel - the body count, prizes to the highest scorer.
There had been a kind of peverse pleasure; he'd inflicted the shoulder wound with a calm kind of malice, comparing his own to Potter's, and feeling a deep swell of satisfaction. Sheer anger had ravaged his system, making him want to pay for everything he'd suffered under this boy, under the boy before him and for years of humiliation. To a boy, a child,
(a sacrificial lamb)
a youth.
And... Potter had... Potter had somehow recognised him (even behind a mask) and had just... laughed.
He had just lay there, silent, bleeding and broken, and had found it within himself to laugh instead of scream. And throughout the rest of the torture Harry made no more sounds but to laugh again. This had antagonised his torturers and increased their fury, but Harry hadn't seemed to be in control of his body...
And as this happened, someone had hauled Potter up by his shoulders and he had stood on his own until a curse had shattered the bones in his left leg. As he crumpled, someone had evidently taken this idea to heart because exactly the same thing had happened to the boy's right leg.
The memory of Bellatrix snapping Potter's fingers, one by one, was going to stay with him for a long time.
It was not right, to see a broken child like that. That's what Potter was. He had been battered and beaten, but never broken, before... he had come close, but had taken the diversion of insanity. Now Death Eaters had bent a child's spirit so far that there was nothing left any more... It wasn't right to do something to such an innocent. It just... it just wasn't... right.
Justice was a concept that had never, ever honestly occurred to Snape before. It was something he had heard fleeting tales about, but he'd never seen pure justice in action before. Oh, he'd seen twisted versions, but... if you ground the universe down to the finest powder and sieved it through the finest sieve you would not find one atom of truth, one molecule of justice. Such things were human concepts and there they lived: in the brains of the human species... but not in the practise. Murderers, paedophile rapists walked free. Innocents served life sentences. Well, maybe it was a bit of a cliché example, but it was important. Such examples were what civilisation was built on. Such civilisations were what created this idea of justice.
Maybe true justice had existed with the first philosophers; Plato had had a few interesting ideas on it. But now... 'now' was the kind of era where the natives of a country were referred to as savages, which, funnily enough, had nothing to do with a rich system of beliefs, a reasonable law system and a wonderful cultural heritage, but more to do with the kind of behaviour that was more commonly found in men wearing suits. The english languge was a clumsy tool, but it served its purpose well enough.
Potter had stopped shivering. Indeed, he was no longer hiding his face. He stared mutely at his hands, stance still and lethargic. Snape wondered if Potter had been thinking the same things that he had. He tried again.
"Potter."
No respose.
"Potter, you have to go back to bed."
Potter made no more moves. Snape was horribly tempted just to let him be, but he'd never hear the end of it from Dumbledore. It would be the metaphorical equivalent of breaking wind in an echoey dungeon.
Snape was totally clueless how to act. He sensed that harsh words and sharp retorts would make no difference here, so he may as well save his breath. Snape made sure he was comfortable and sat down on the floor for a long wait.
He had no idea what he was doing.
The emptiness inside Harry's skull mocked him, taunted him. Merely by being near him, Snape was driving back some of that void. Merely by tolerating his presence, Snape was helping Harry heal a little. But not enough, not nearly enough.
"They all died."
It was barely even a whisper, but Snape heard it, in the empty stillness of the isolated room.
"Yes, they did," he replied. It didn't matter who the boy was talking about. People had died. There was no point trying to cover it up. Silence would have been worse than an accusal.
"He'll come back for me."
"Yes, he will."
Harry stood, slowly. Snape rose with him, wincing painfully as his abdominal muscles screamed blue murder.
Potter took a couple of steps forward. He made to brush past Snape, but some joint somewhere gave way and brought Potter down to his knees. A kneejerk reaction made him grab a handful of Snape's robes and drag him down to his knees as well. He slumped forwards with the momentum of it, and Snape found he had the Boy-Who-Lived crying silently and unmovingly into his arm.
This child is beyond cracking point. Such burdens were not made for one so young.
Snape sits there. He pulls Potter up slightly because he's restricting the circulation to Snape's leg. This leaves Potter leaning against the man's chest, his shoulder digging into Snape's ribcage, but otherwise, he makes no other move. Sometimes it's best just to let these ones cry themselves out.
So they sit there. Snape waits patiently but Potter seems to have no end to his sorrows. Deaths, old, new, accidental and flu, seemed to be queuing up to kick him squarely in the chest and my, isn't it painful. Potter is just getting each of his miseries out one by one, but there are an awful lot of them.
The boy makes no effort to control his sorrow. He is far too gone for that. It has been allowed to grow into an ugly, pulsating monster and it is too big for its cage.
The tears flow, completely unconstrained but strangely silent.
Snape is doing something Harry has needed for sixteen-odd years, albeit in a strange fashion.
Harry Potter is getting a hug.
Scientists say that a twenty-second hug is enough to noticeably boost your brain into happy-drive, but scientific facts could go hang right now. Harry had simply needed another human touch after all these years. Sure, he got hugs from his friends all the time (when pride could take a flying leap, at least), but they were simply displays of affection. There had never been anything he could remember that had told him that there was someone out there who could take a share of his pain, halve his burden and free him up a little.
A man who had never known friendship beyond the callous alliances in the dog-eat-everything world of the Death Eaters sat and held the fragile, bent and broken form of the boy-who-lived as the child sobbed tears of failure into his chest.
When Harry had attacked Snape, Harry had found a little out about Snape. When Snape had tortured Harry... Snape had seen in the laughter the shell of a person Harry Potter had become. He saw it and realised there was absolutely nothing he could do, and he was right. Only time and others, friends, would help Potter build himself back up. That was not Snape's job. Perhaps Snape's job was just to listen.
Voldemort had commended Snape for his clever use of the penetrating curse... it had gone straight through the boy's shoulder and into the central nervous system, causing untold damage. Even with spells and potions it would take a while to heal, and Harry would be on crutches for a while.
Well, at least Voldemort trusted him again
('insofar as Voldemort trusts')
and he didn't need to worry so much about discovery.
The very minute they had been told to apparate back, in Snape's case to the forest outside of the castle grounds, he had gone back to Hogsmeade after bundling his Death Eater's mask somewhere secret. There were no tracks, nothing. The blizzard that had begun to quieten down had erased all sign of anything.
Snape had spent the better part of four hours running. He searched every crook and nanny in the Hogsmeade area, he searched every drift of snow. He had sent out emergency messages to St Mungo's and had them and the Hogwarts staff all working: searching for Potter, covering up the dead or healing the wounded... as best they could.
Snape was searching from four 'till eight in the morning. He watched the sun rise slowly over the horizon through a gauze of exhaustion and had stumbled back to the Square to find Dumbledore waiting gravely for him.
"Take a seat, Severus."
Exhausted, Snape had done so on a fallen trunk of a tree. It had given way with a wet clrackk to reveal a small hollow of snow and a cowering boy covered in blood, both legs useless, shoulder occasionally twitching...
He'd died in Snape's arms, but a resuscitation spell had gotten his systems going again despite worries of long-term damage.
And now a broken child slept in his arms. This sixteen-year-old had become ten years old again as he watched. Snape began to stand, and brought the silent form of the child Potter with him.
llllllllll
Harry took in a deep breath, and opened his eyes.
The fact he actually had lungs to breathe with and eyes to open was a surprise. Right now he'd expected to be wafting around on the next plane of existence in a shiny new ethereal body.
There were sheets beneath his back (which was becoming an annoyingly familiar sensation), there were close bandages covering his upper torso, which was bare. He wore pyjama bottoms and a worrying pair of socks.
He blinked, and found he was wearing his glasses. So that's why everything was so clear.
He focused dreamily on the ceiling. He knew he had worries and cares, they were floating around somewhere, but right now he didn't want to know. He was detached, and he wanted it to stay that way.
He flexed his fingers. There were bandages covering most of his hands but they appeared fixed, as did his legs.
His entire body felt very heavy, and he realised he was about as weak as an infant. This was not a pleasant thought.
He sat up very slightly and his entire back screamed in sheer agony. He fell back to the pillows, wincing.
There was immediate commotion, and at least three healers had somehow appeared and were fussing over him. Harry tried to wave them away, but found he couldn't move his arm above shoulder-height.
"F'ck 'ff," he muttered, not liking the rasping, painful quality of his voice or the way the world spun slightly.
The Healers appeared satisfied with whatever they had been doing, and two of them rushed off. Harry heard someone yell "Inform Professor Dumbledore!"
He didn't hear much more before he drifted off into a fevered sleep.
llllllllll
When he woke again it was evening, and the setting sun was casting an orange glow around the room. He was mercifully alone.
He felt fevered, hot. He didn't like it, but it wasn't as bad as... what else he had lived through. He could bear the discomfort.
He very cautiously pulled himself into a sitting position, and looked at his exposed upper torso. Bandages wrapped around his arms, his chest, his shoulders. He could feel the pressure of a hundred blood-absorbant pads. That was the disadvantage of magical science; some things could just not be cured by a flick of a wand. Sometimes muggle routes were the best to take.
The four fingers that had been broken were extremely sore; there, at least, the Healers had been able to do something. They were fixed but strapped together, leaving his thumb free.
Raising his arm was an effort in itself, and he realised that he was furiously hungry, furiously tired and furiously weak. His legs also felt extremely lethargic, but at least they weren't broken anymore. He took a glance around at his surroundings.
The hospital wing was thankfully empty. Orange light filled the room from long windows letting in the light of the dying
(no not dying nothing should die)
sun. It was calm and peaceful.
"Hello, Harry."
Harry's head snapped around, making his neck crick. Stood in the doorway was Dumbledore. Harry relaxed again.
Dumbledore walked forwards and seated himself on a chair by Harry's bedside.
"This is becoming all too common an occurrence, my boy," said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling kindly. Harry stared ferociously at the foot of his bed. Dumbledore knew more than to break the silence.
"They all died, Albus," said Harry finally, in a low voice. "They all died because Voldemort wanted me to know it was my fault."
"Are you going to let him have that victory?"
"Not openly."
Dumbledore appeared to be calmly thinking.
"You've suffered more than anyone can ever guess, both physically and mentally. If you cannot accept this, Harry, if you cannot understand that you need to heal, then you will never know that it is not your fault. You're far to used to taking the burden for things like this."
Bridled, Harry looked away. Dumbledore placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezed gently, and left Harry to his thoughts.
kcat44: Wow. Er, wow. Wow. Am, er, lost for words. Seriously. Wow. You know, when I started this originally as a one-shot I had no idea I'd get such a response as I did. I actually think my one-shots are better (specifically, the second chapter of Consciousness - it's quite clearly the best thing I've ever written. Ever. In my opinion, at least.)
The story is named 'Wingbroken' for a couple of coincidences. I was writing this out longhand in front of the T.V. (the first chapter, I mean) and I was watching the Batman Forever video (my favorite Batman). There was a line in it, when Albert is packing away Robin's circus stuff: "Broken wings mend in time." I thought: 'aHA! What a good basis for this.' At the time the story was very undirected and sort of floating. And you can see that quote has made it into the summary. THEN I thought:'Broken wings... turn it into a one-word format... Wingbroken! Yay!' It's a habit of me and my friends to play around with words - for example, when asking for tipp-ex, it becomes "can you pass the ex of tipp, please?' You get the idea.
Bluethought means... well, a variety of things, I suppose. I was thinking about a good pename because I always have real probelms finding one I am completely happy with. I thought: 'What's my favorite colour? Blue. What do I like to do more than anything else? Think. Blue+thoughts Bluethought. I do like to think, however, that it can mean whatever you want it to mean.
crazNM: The ink thing... hmm. I may have mentioned this before (but I can't remember whether or not to you) but this
story tends to run away with me in a lunchbox, so sometimes even I'm not sure what's going on. I think it was just a
subconscious plea for help, in a way. eav: They talked like American kids! Argh! What has American corporalisation turned me into! Have I forsaken my
British heritage and upraising due to overseas marketing!
Ahem.
I'll give that blood/snow thing some thought (possibly for later stories.. it sounds good. I just wanted to give the
impression that Harry was so focused upon himself and his body that he didn't notice the snow... although I'm sure
there's a refence in there somewhere. : Harry Potter DOES get a hug... and about time, if you ask me. Strega: I think I would have opted for suicide by now, were I in his position, but he's got more moral fibre than I have.
I KNOW I'm a coward, so there you go.
Actually, I'd love it if Lupin bit someone... that would make for an interesting fic. But could you imagine a
Snape-werewolf?
sakura saisaka: I know how libraries are... I loaded that chapter up in my local library. I'm frankly amazed you found
it so amusing - I never usually intend for this to be THAT funny... still, I'm not complaining.
KrazeyForever: There are a number of things I never wish to hear during surgery: "Bad dog! Come back with that!"
"Fire! Everybody out!" and "Oh, no! I've lost my contact lense!" usually top the list. Having a doctor with a laptop
would not be inspiring, although I would probably find it funny.
My updating depends on access to computers. I used to use my school ones at lunchtime, but they just installed big
brother software and they are not very happy about it, so I've resorted to using the central library, which is a fair
bit out of my way. Updates will be slower, but I'll try to have another chapter running soon.
Vendethiel: I'm frankly honoured. If you ever do complete it, post it on some website. I'd love to look at it.
Read300300: Okay I'll take your word on that one... no reposting. And what's life without a little ego-trip every now
and then? I do it all the time...
Er, um... incidentally, what is your new fandom? I write in two - Harry Potter and one other, for which I have a different
penname.
I think it's because I'm the author of this story, but I really do fail to see what other see in it, when there are people
like agentgrrl and S. Thanatos wandering around without the acclaim they deserve. I stared Wingbroken when I was
fourteen and it sort of... balooned. You know, it was very nearly a one-shot.
Nobel literature prize.. cough... right... although I'll agree with the no-good idiot Fudge thing...
Asiea: Freaky is fun.
seastones88: My access to computerdom has become nastily limited, and the new computer I was promised by my
parents three years ago seems set to be arrived in April. Hopefully. That's exactly what I was told last year, though. If it
doesn't come I may have to update like, every fortnight or something. I'll try to update next week, just for you. ; )
Mmmm... caffeine...
Quillian: Working as fast as I can, just for you guys. ; )
SheWolfe7: I'm working hard at getting access to the internet for next monday or wednesday, so I'll try and update
soon.
Shading in Grey: -Gasp- You think I'm like Stephen King too? Will you marry me?
Pleione: Swearing is the mind's way of expressing anger. And everything in this fic is aaaaangry.
Ija Ijevna: Review when you feel you need to; I understand about work and suchlike. The pressures of exams are, as
we speak, forcing me to cut my writing time short.
A) A lot of my characters are a little OOC. Okay, I lie, all of them. But then again, is this not the purpose of the
fanfiction? To show others how we view fill-in-name-of-subject's world?
B) Voldemort, um, thought he was dead... well, they at least wanted him to suffer. I have to admit, this story
sometimes runs away with me in a sack, so I end up having to answer to my reviewers, but anyway. If Harry died now,
what would be the point of this fic?
I'm glad I've got reviewers like you to keep me on my toes. ; )
Angel Baby: Hey there.
'Death Munchers'... oh, I like that. I'll have to try to put that in somewhere.
I do so enjoy writing banter between enemies... even though they end up waaay OOC. Still, whatchagonnado.
'Mail-order penguins'? Aaaaaaaaw! I love penguins! Totally the best choice. I'll
put a catflap on my freezer door, they can live in there.
Magami: Wow! Thankyou!
saiyanwizardgurl: 'Confuzzling'... I do so love that word.
Susan : Helllooo there. It HAS been awhile.
I'm trying much, much harder to update sooner, which involves me going straight from school to the central library.
Am working harder - April is merely the date for which the shiny new computer my parents promised should arrive.
logi: Good for you. : )
Erinamation-limited2-nothing: I have my flamers, too.
Kalorna Enera: I never really looked at the Wizard Of Oz as a 'movie with flying monkeys in', but I have to say it works
and I'll never watch it the same way again.
I don't know about Lupin... I know for a fact he was waaay OOC. I just needed him like that for the chapter to click,
as it were.
Keep reading for me!
Breanna Senese: I think that the only thing worth living for is to make sure your existence annoys someone else, be it
flamers, siblings or a cult of homicidal madmen/women.
Chassa: Updating has been most interesting of late... i.e. I haven't been able to do much of it.
totallystellar: Glad you like it. Personally, I don't consider it my best work, but as long as it's readable I'm happy with
it.
yaukira: Check out my bio page... I lurve System Of A Down. Amongst others.
SaphirePhoenix: The whole idea was that it was slightly confusing.
TeahLeafs: It was Cedric that died. Remember? Fourth book, Triwizard Tournament. I haven't come across any good
Sirius angst fics, but I'll keep looking.
sockenfresser AKA sockie: Oo, groovy name. Am liking.
Here you go: line! ; ) Sorry it took me so long to update.
I'm not suicidal, but I went through a nasty week last month when I got so overloaded with homework I considered
myself depressed. That's about the extent of it. I just get myself into the mindset of what it would be like to be
depressed, and then romantisize it.
I think that, because I am not depressed, reading and writing this acts like a safety valve to stop me actually GETTTING
depressed. I view it that way, so I don't have to USE a therapist. ; )
I'm glad you think this is well-written... that makes one of us, at least.
I LIKE constant reviewers... they're usually the best kind... you're not annoying me, trust me on this one.
I find that the best person to pull you out of any mental decline is usually the person you least expect... last time it
was Alan Rickman in Die Hard. Boy, I love that movie.
CJ: I'll start updating maybe twice weekly when I finish writing the story (another chapter to go... sob) and whilst it's
not quite daily, it's an improvement.
HPbabe143: The whole updating-thing is getting difficult, as you can see.
Kath87: Hmm, advanced English... you make the perfect reviewer. : )