A/N I admit it…I've become a review addict, with all the sweet reviews I've received.
Whitehound: You are probably right. But erm…being a non native speaker, I have no idea at all what London or northern dialects sound like…(hangs head) forgive me? Please? Can you overlook this fault? (Puppy dog eyes)
TEC: thank you so much for your many reviews. I really appreciate how you leave a thank you at the end of every review, it's very encouraging. So I'll leave you one this time: Thank you!
On a different note, I am still gobsmacked by how well this story has been received, considering it was just a silly experiment to me. It seems I have now obliged myself to writing it the best I can. So I'm saying goodbye to the world of Extreme Fluff for a while to work on my two unfinished stories. (Till Travelling Days Are Gone is still a work in progress as well…sigh…I never was good at multitasking…)
"Severus hadn't been exaggerating when he said we'd be cleaning up messes," Harry thought morosely, as he spelled away vomit and other excrements that were generally not supposed to end up on the floor.
He looked at Severus, who had levitated the extremely ill headmaster back to his bed and was expertly putting in an IV line.
Harry sighed as he banished the last of the filth with a sweep of his wand. Dobby was better at this sort of thing, but the elf had been monitoring Dumbledore for nearly 36 hours, and Harry had eventually dragged him to bed and ordered him to sleep for at least 12 hours before doing any kind of work whatsoever.
"Severus? How come you know how to do IV's and all?"
The tired Potions Master looked up. He too, had been up a long time, but both Harry and Dobby regularly kicked him out of the room, saying they would call him when he was needed and to get plenty of rest. Of course, most of the time he'd refuse to budge, but they did try.
"Being a Slytherin doesn't mean I don't appreciate the usefulness of Muggle inventions," he sneered, the tension of having the headmaster here and the workload of treating the man too much to remain civil.
"As you can imagine, he won't keep down any potion, so that renders them useless, and spells are too dangerous to try. He needs to replenish his fluids, and I have adapted the potions for intravenous use. Anything else?" he snapped.
Harry shook his head, knowing very well that to try and pry more information out of the man now would be suicide. Gryffindors were brave, but not to the point of throwing themselves in the path of a very upset and exhausted Severus Snape.
With a final wandsweep, he tidied the room.
"He should be able to rest for a couple of hours now," Severus said, collapsing in the chair by the bed.
"Why don't you get some rest as well, Severus?" Harry suggested, "I've made your favourite soup earlier. Eat something and go to bed, I'll watch him."
"Like you know what to do when there's a problem with the IV."
Harry snorted. "As a matter of fact, I DO know what to do when there's a problem with the IV. I took some lessons in a muggle hospital. You never know when you get hurt on a mission without any potions or healing spells nearby."
The Potions Master just growled, but he did get up from the chair and walked to the door.
"Call me if…"
Harry nodded reassuringly. "If anything changes, I'll call you."
Severus left the room, and Harry monitored him as he walked down the hall to make sure he did eat something and then went to bed, instead of going straight to the potions lab.
"He must be really tired," Harry thought, "he hardly even protested."
"Harry," a weak voice said.
"Yes, Headmaster? Can I get you anything?"
"No," the sick man shook, licking his dry lips with an equally dry tongue. Harry took the glass of water and dipped the end of a washcloth in it, running it over the man's lips.
A deep sigh was his reward.
"When…is this…going to be over…Harry?" the headmaster managed.
Harry took another cloth and wiped the sweat off the forehead. "You have entered the final stage," he said, "it's been over a week since you first fell ill. Severus guesses it should take no more then two days now before you start to get better. So hang in there for a while longer; the worst is nearly over."
"Harry…." The man tried to sit up. Harry pushed him down on the bed.
"Don't do that. Just lay still and enjoy the rest while you can."
"Where did I start…to go wrong with you…Harry?" the voice barely audible now.
Harry hesitated, but the blue eyes didn't leave his face.
"When you didn't insist on being secret keeper yourself. When you left me at the Dursleys. When I entered Hogwarts, and you actually encouraged me to do things at eleven, that grown wizards have failed to survive. But mostly when you led me to believe that Gryffindors are perfect, and Slytherins don't matter. Severus was right, you know. I entered as an unprejudiced child, but you allowed me to grow into a spoiled little sod, as you did my father and godfather before me. I wish the hat had put me in Slytherin despite my protests; I wouldn't have grown into the arrogant teenager I have been."
The Headmaster nodded warily, a tear running down his face.
"I have been…so wrong…repeated…the same mistakes…"
Harry put the damp cloth on Dumbledore's forehead. "Try to get some sleep."
A sound at the door startled him. Severus was standing in the doorway, a mug of soup in his hands.
"Sometimes, Mr Potter, you surprise me," he admitted, before turning around and stalking off towards his rooms, robes billowing behind him.
Two days later found three wizards and one house elf about to go over the edge with exhaustion.
Dumbledore was finally feeling somewhat better and could drink a few sips of water occasionally without starting to puke.
Severus looked like a ghost and had lost weight again. He stubbornly refused to leave and get some rest. Finally, when it was clear that the headmaster would continue to recover, Harry distracted him so Dobby could put a sleeping charm on the irate Potions Master. They carried him to his room and put him to bed.
"You go to bed now too, Dobby, and sleep for about six hours. After that, I'll go to sleep for six. By that time Severus will have woken up and we should be ready for all hell to break loose."
Dobby smirked. "But it will be too late by then, he'll have slept well. Dobby will make sure the professor eats when he wakes up."
"POTTER!"
Harry turned over in his bed and hid his head in the pillow, groaning.
"Oh joy, Severus is awake," he grumbled, checking his alarm clock. He had slept a little over six hours.
"Potter, get out here! How DARE you put me to sleep like that!"
The angry man was now standing in the room, looking as menacing as ever.
"Goodmorning, Severus. Sleep well?" Harry asked, yawning and stretching. The Potions Master fumed.
"You insufferable brat! 100 points from Gryffindor!"
Harry couldn't help it. He broke down and laughed so hard his sides ached.
"Oh Severus, I hate to tell you this, but you can't deduct points anymore. But tell you what, I'll take detention instead. I'll go look after Dumbledore while you eat and relax a bit. Deal?"
Severus collapsed on the end of the bed when he realised he had been outsmarted for the second time in a day.
"You hexed me!"
"I did no such thing. Dobby put a sleeping charm on you. I would not call that 'hexing', Severus."
"And then you abducted me from the room!"
"We put you to bed."
"Nobody puts me to bed! Ever!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Severus, how did you think you ended up in bed when you first came here?"
Severus slumped down, brooding.
Harry patted him on the shoulder. "I know it's hard, Sev."
The Potions Master looked up. "I don't think I can bear to have him around me anymore once he's recovered, Harry. Now that he's capable of holding down the potions I give him, he should be well enough to go back to Hogwarts in a few days."
"You still hate him?"
"I don't know how I feel about him now, that's the problem. I need to sort it out, and I can't do that with him hovering around me. I can go to my own mansion if you want him to…"
"SEVERUS SNAPE! Don't you even dare finish that sentence. Have you forgotten what I told you? This is your home as much as it is mine. You come first, remember that. I will contact Minerva and tell her to expect him in a few days, and to arrange someone to look after him. He won't need very intensive care anymore, the house elves at Hogwarts can handle it."
"Thank you, Harry," Severus said, looking relieved, "you're still a brat though, for tricking me…twice."
"I'm just really smart."
"Of course. And I can beat Minerva at Quidditch."
"Minerva?"
"Why did you think she is so interested in the team's accomplishments? She was a superb chaser when she was younger."
"I should invite her to play with Draco and me sometime, then."
"So he took the job?"
"Yes. And I did too. I'm going to take over Defense from Remus; he is incredibly overworked now. Tonks and I will be sharing the workload. She will live at Hogwarts with Remus so I can stay here. Besides, if I lived at Hogwarts Remus would be pestering me about marrying and having babies even more then he does now."
"He wants you to…settle down, as it were? And you have no wish for that?"
"Yes! No. I mean, I love Ginny. There's no one I'd rather marry then her, but we are young and I do have Voldemort on my hands. She wants to finish her education first. So we decided to wait. But Remus thinks I should be marrying and having babies just because my father had me when he was my age." Harry babbled on, turning red under his former professor's gaze.
Severus chuckled, and Harry pretended to pout, happy that he had gotten the man to smile again after two difficult weeks.
Dumbledore recovered quickly, and Minerva had arranged for a house elf to look after him in his own rooms when he would be returning.
He was weak and had lost a lot of weight, but the old wizard regained his strength at an amazing rate, and the day came when he would return to Hogwarts. Harry had created a portkey straight to the headmasters bedroom at Hogwarts for the occasion. It was too much to expect the man to fly the mile to the guard house to floo out.
He and Harry had agreed to meet in a few days' time to discuss what to do about Moody.
And now Severus had to decide what to do about Dumbledore. The old man looked at him as Harry created the portkey. Severus' face didn't betray any emotion.
"Severus…" the headmaster began, "I promised you I would respect your wishes this time. Do you ever want to see me again?"
Severus looked him straight in the eye. "I wouldn't count on it, Headmaster. Do not try to contact me."
The old man lowered his eyes and nodded, defeated.
"I won't."
He hesitated, then he reached up and touched the Potions Masters cheek with his fingers. "Farewell, my boy. Be happy."
He turned to Harry, who couldn't help but feel sorry for the man.
"Take good care of him, Harry," Dumbledore whispered, and handed the boy a note.
He took the portkey and activated it.
Harry stood next to Severus, staring at the place where the headmaster had just disappeared.
"You let him believe he will never see you again," Harry said, but his voice held no condemnation.
"It is ultimately kinder," Severus replied, "I don't know what I'm going to do yet. Even I would not be so cruel as to give him false hope, only to crush it later."
Harry didn't think that would be the case as he saw the man reach up and touch his cheek where the Headmaster had caressed his skin, but he held his tongue. This was Severus' battle, not his.
"What's that note he gave you?" Severus asked.
Harry opened it and let out a surprised noise.
"He has returned your money. All of it. This is the number of the vault and the password to give to the goblin who keeps the key to it. This must have cost him a fortune, the Order used the money in the past years and of course we have stolen some back with the sale of the mansion. He must have taken it out of his own vaults."
Severus turned and ran from the room.
A few weeks later"I want to go to Diagon Alley," Severus said, over breakfast, "can you come?"
Harry nodded. "No classes today, Tonks is taking them to a trip to the Auror department. Anything specific you want to buy?"
"Just some of the rarer potions ingredients. But for the most part, I just want to go out. It shouldn't be very busy there today. I want to shop a bit, buy some books maybe, have lunch somewhere, and I did promise Fred and George I would come by sometime to admire their shop."
"Ah, a day of fun. I'm all in favour of that."
Severus was subdued the first half hour in the Alley. It was quiet, like predicted, but he had yet to get used to being in public again.
Fortunately not too many people noticed them as they made their way first down to Gringotts, where they took care of Severus' financial business, and deposited half of the money Dumbledore had paid for Snape Manor back into the headmasters vault, and then to the apothecary, where Harry left it to Severus to order whatever was needed to restock the lab. They sat down for an icecream at Florian Fortescue's when they saw someone approach them. Severus paled but sat up straighter. Arthur Weasley made their way over to them, nervous.
"Hello Harry, Severus," he said. They heard the tremor in his voice.
"Hello Arthur," Harry said warmly, glancing at Severus to see how he was doing.
But Arthur Weasley sat down and looked the Potions Master straight in the eye.
"I am very sorry, Severus," he said, "I should never have believed you would ever harm Molly."
Severus licked his lips. "I never blamed you and your family, Arthur," he said softly, "I can't even begin to understand how hard it must have been for you, to loose her like that."
Arthur had gone completely grey, Severus noticed. His eyes had not yet lost the pained look whenever his wife was mentioned, although he smiled fondly at the memory of her.
"It's so good to hear people speak so highly of her," he said, "makes me feel that I wasn't the only one who saw what an incredible woman she was."
Severus smiled. Arthur patted his hand. "She thought highly of you as well, Severus. When I heard about Lucius…I felt so guilty for never giving you a chance…but very happy that Molly had not been wrong about you."
"Thank you," Severus said, and sighed. "Would you like an icecream too, Arthur?" he asked, with a slight grin this time. The tension broke, and they had a nice half-hour just talking quietly after that.
When they came home, an agitated Draco was pacing the livingroom.
"Thank Merlin you're back," he cried out, grabbing both their shoulders and looking them over as if to search for injuries.
"We were just in Diagon Alley, Draco," Harry said, "What's wrong?"
Draco swallowed. "I was so worried when I didn't find you here," he admitted, "Harry, Lucius has escaped."
"What? From Azkaban?"
"No, from the Ministry holding cells. Apparently they never transported him to Azkaban. Harry, he kidnapped one of the first years but let the kid go after he had reached the Apparition point. Tonks managed to keep him from hurting the children, but they are all pretty shaken. She did do the best shield charm I ever saw, though, she shielded the whole group of kids on her own. The other Aurors didn't even more a finger, the bloody cowards!" he raged.
"We couldn't trace him. But there's no doubt that he has rejoined Voldemort by now."
"And given him back his right hand man," Harry added grimly.