Hiding Under the Ninth Earth
Chapter Three : Walking a Fine Line
Part II : The Sacred and the Profane
13 February 2023
Saganth roused. He hurt. Raising his head off the floor, several quick flickers of his tongue told him he was alone with his master, but his eyes detected no movement in the body laying near him. He ran a careful, exploratory shimmy down his length. To his considerable relief, he determined that, while his midsection was deeply bruised, he'd not been crushed. He tentatively moved from his position at his master's feet. Finding he could undulate reasonably well, if a bit crookedly, he flicked his tongue in and out again, tasting the air. The first thing he noticed was the room's warmth, the second that his master, still lying unmoving on the floor, was also hurt and in some distress.
Slithering up to his master's face, his fitful tongue tasted the thick, sharp tang of fresh blood redolent in the air. He drew back, hissing his displeasure at the bitter aftertaste coming from the fine filaments covering the Master's face, shoulders, and the floor around them. He could sense more than see the restive movement of the strands and instinctively knew he must stay clear of them; they smelled dangerous. And if they were bad for him, they must be bad for his master.
Saganth was a simple creature with a simple mind and, under other circumstances, he might have been wrong, but from the sheer number of filaments covering Snape, it was indeed dangerous for any skilled Legilimens to be exposed to so many memories at once. Saganth, however, only knew his master needed help and the master's mate would be the best help, but he'd already left with Sister. Well, he would just have to fetch him, then. Determined, he moved onto the charmed stone flags forming his normal path through what the humans called 'The Office' and, as fast as his bruised condition would allow, traversed the stone's tingling warmth to the door the master's mate had used not so long ago. Each undulation a bit more difficult than the last, Saganth slid through the portal in the doorway as he passed from The Office to The Nest and Home.
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2013
Harry and Colch travelled to an unused wing of the hospital. The director put his hand on a circular plate on the wall with a muttered spell. After a few moment's wait, a red viscous blob came out of the edges, covering his hand. The lock glowed and, with a bell-like sound, the doors before them clicked and opened onto a deserted corridor. Given the nature of the lock and the colour of its matrix, one usually warning of unsafe places, the passage was as nasty as Severus had half-expected. Forgetting for the moment that this was a memory, he carefully stepped around several large standing puddles of brackish water reflecting the smoky light of the torches lining the sides. Water dripped from the ceiling, sliding cold down the darkened stone faces of walls covered in an unhealthy looking orange mould; death mould it was called, foul and poisonous if ingested. It reminded Severus of the Hogwarts dungeons before he'd taken them over.
"Where is this place?" Harry asked, looking around him with repugnance. "We're no longer in the hospital, are we?"
His footsteps echoing down the hall, Colch hesitated before replying, "Not this part, no. It's a Wizarding Space connection to the oldest part of the hospital."
With a thoughtful pause, Harry remarked, "I thought that wing had suffered irreparable damage during the war and was taken down."
"Most of it was removed," Colch replied, "but we were warned by the Augurs that the end section we are about to enter, the one with the cornerstone, needed to remain for the hospital's continuing good fortune." He dodged a weeping section of the stone ceiling. "Since the wing is now hidden from sight, and everyone assumes, as you did, that it's gone, we use it for our more... reclusive clients who are willing to spend a few extra Galleons for the privacy it affords."
Harry snorted even as Severus did. "One would think that if this is the portal for the 'paying guests', one would have taken care to make it a bit more hospitable."
Colch chuckled. "One might, one supposes, if one did not have to deal with young Medi-witches and Healers bent on out-of-the-way places for some 'practical' anatomy lessons." At Harry's unexpected laughter, Colch smiled. "We made it this way to keep 'biology' in the classroom."
Even Severus had to admit it was humorous, which just made him suspect that someone else had thought it up; Colch just didn't strike him as the double entendre 'type', not that he was maligning his intelligence or anything. He snickered when Harry muttered to himself, "Good point, but classroom anatomy can be 'intimately' learned below the desk as much as above it."
"Eh, what's that?" Colch asked, turning to look at the healer, his face scrunched up in confusion.
"Ah, I said I see your point. The classroom is the proper place for such study..." Severus laughed outright at Colch's raised brow of puzzlement, which only served to confirm his earlier theory that the Director was a humourless twit; however, as he well knew, Harry was not hampered by any such infirmity.
The light banter stopped abruptly when they neared the end of the hallway. Placing his hand on an identical lock plate, the green ooze indicating safer passage beyond, Colch once again requested entrance. While waiting, he added, "Besides, the paying guests use a different, concealed entrance; only the staff use this corridor."
Standing behind Colch, Harry nodded thoughtfully, the question in his eyes matching Severus' own: just how often was this corridor used, and why had he not heard of it before?
When cleared, a hidden door opened automatically and they stepped into a plain corridor similar to the other patient floors in the main hospital. Clean, impersonal, and empty, the only thing missing was the normally pervasive antiseptic odor. Instead, it smelled of lavender, fresh and green, like one would find in a field in the early morning.
Severus pulled himself out of his own memories of his mother when Harry and the Director moved away.
Further down the hall, the early morning light filtered through a glass wall capping the end. Two doors down from the curtainless window with its view of a forest beyond, Colch stopped at a pair of ornately carved doors. Measuring them with his eyes, Severus suspected the opening, with both doors open, would be wide enough to admit a levitated patient side by side with an attendant and still leave room to spare. However, he never got to confirm it as Colch opened only one of them, walking quietly into a dimly lit room.
"Damn it," Colch muttered. "We missed them; she's already here. And where's that orderly they promised?" With a muttered spell, harsh white lights illuminated the space.
Right behind him, Harry took several steps into the room and stopped cold. Although he knew he'd go right through him if he'd kept going, habit made Severus move quickly to the side.
It didn't take but an instant to see why Harry wasn't moving. Lying on a narrow bed was a woman, obviously pregnant, whose distended abdomen seemed huge compared to her severe emaciation. 'More like a husk, really,' he thought, staring at the bones and sinew clearly defined beneath the thin material of her reasonably clean, long-sleeved gown. Her age was hard to tell at this distance, although she looked ancient, and he found himself following Harry as he slowly approached the bed.
There was no improvement with a closer inspection. Her skin, which had appeared to be carved from ivory at first glance, was actually the palest yellow. Parched, it lay in loose, fine wrinkles on her hands and face as if at one time, she had been firmly slender but had since been desiccated like an unwrapped mummy--except for her breasts and stomach, both of which were plump mounds. If he watched long enough, he could see the feeble movements of the child within her through the thin cotton robe, which at first glance, he'd mistaken for a gown of some sort. Her hair, which had not seen soap in quite some time, spread in long snarls along the pillow where it escaped from the loose bun atop her head. It was hard to tell the original colour, chestnut maybe, but there was no mistaking the grey shot throughout. If she was young, she'd led a hard life, but given her dainty bone structure, she'd once been beautiful.
Harry reached out and gently pinched a small amount of skin on her hand, quickly removing his fingers. The flesh remained tented for a long moment before slowly settling back into its original slack form, although Severus could clearly see where Harry had touched her. "Severely dehydrated," Harry murmured, his hand smoothing her skin back. A wave of his hand dimming the overhead lights, he next muttered, "Mico Orbis," and a small ball of bright light hovered over her; he directed it to her face and gingerly peeled her upper lip towards the remnant of her small nose. While the teeth were starkly white, even and healthy, the pale, receded gums exposed the dentil. Releasing her lip, Harry shook his head as if he'd expected it. After directing the light with a nudge of his finger and a whispered command to hover a few inches above her eyes, Harry gently pushed an eyelid open and released it. He did this several times to both eyes, waiting patiently as the lids took their time closing, the lush lashes stark against her colourless cheeks. Severus supposed this one thing, more than any other, angered him the most. Her cheeks should be rosy, damn it! Harry noted quietly to himself, "Pupils unresponsive."
Stiffening, as if steeling himself for some terrible ordeal, which Severus supposed it might be, Harry released the ties on the robe to expose the woman's breasts and stomach. Severus didn't know what he'd been expecting, but the glow of healthy pink skin, running from just above her swollen breasts to the tops of her thighs, seemed almost obscene in light of the rest of her body: plump health withered to shrivelled devastation. With so much time separating him from a past once filled with such stark dichotomies, Severus swallowed hard against the once-familiar, burning queasiness, marvelling at Harry's apparent control; only a small bunching of muscle at his lower jaw gave any indication of the fury Severus knew he must be feeling.
Displaying his first sign of hesitancy, Harry stretched his arms out over her abdomen; by the movements of his hands and a faint stir of magic, Harry quickly defined the area of the magic sustaining her. Ignoring the faint sparks flying as he entered the protected area, his fingers barely skimmed the surface of her moist but translucent skin. A lump, looking suspiciously like a foot, followed his light touch as if seeking contact. With a shudder so small, Severus almost missed it, Harry closed his eyes and gently lowered his hands until the palms lay flat against the mound. He held them there for some small time, murmuring words in Greek, the baby lying quiet under his hands. Slowly, his eyes opened and, moving slightly to shield the view from Colch, Harry tenderly caressed the bumps under the skin before removing his hands. He dropped them to his sides and stood a few moments deep in thought.
Murmuring, "Nox," the diagnostic light went out and Harry turned to stare at Colch, who was standing behind and to the side where he could see what Harry was doing without getting in the way. His voice devoid of emotion, yet brittle and hard, Harry reported quietly, "The baby, who appears to be about six months in gestational age, seems fairly healthy and active, the mother obviously less so; in fact--" he cleared his throat "--I'm surprised she's alive at all." He gestured over her stomach. "I can't read the baby very well, though. Most of what I 'know' is deduced from touch alone; whoever set up the spells sustaining the mother has blocked the child from other healers." His brows drew together. "You wouldn't know anything about that either, would you?" Harry asked with irritated sarcasm.
The director shook his head. "No, but I would assume the specialist has placed the blocks so his customised spells can't be duplicated without his consent." As Harry's eyebrows flattened, he hastily added, "Not that anyone would think you would take something of that nature; your reputation alone would negate any such thought. It's more than likely a generic protection." He eyed Harry with trepidation; Severus could see Harry wasn't going to let him off the hook so easily.
"They're Dark," he stated flatly.
Colch harumphed, seemingly back on solid ground. "Of course they're Dark. Light magic has nothing similar to his technique." He straightened, saying briskly, "And the baby is no concern of yours. Your task is with the mother. I suggest you get on with it."
Severus shivered at the look on Harry's face; it was one worth remembering, for he'd last worn it when he'd confronted Voldemort the final time nearly twenty-five years ago. Narrowed green eyes spit a barely banked fire of their own; his mouth formed a cold, hard line over a set jaw. Implacable. Determined. Dangerous. Severus wondered if the director knew how close he was to annihilation. Perhaps this was why Harry had set the memory aside; he'd killed the director and wanted no witnesses. Severus shook his head at his own dark humour and dismissed the thought as impossible--at least for Harry.
Colch swallowed, but surprisingly stood firm. "The mother?" he asked, holding his hand out in invitation.
Muscle by muscle Severus could see Harry force himself to relax, but in the end he seemed unable to completely douse the fire in his eyes. His movements crisp, Harry turned on his heel and moved to stand at the head of the pallet. Taking several deep, calming breaths, he closed his eyes and unerringly placed his unflinching hands on the woman's temples under her greasy hair. He'd no more murmured the first few diagnostic spells when he snatched his hands back, wiping them unconsciously on his jeans. The fire was back; he turned to Colch and said in a deadly, quiet voice, "Who did this to her?"
Colch drew himself up to his full height, which still left him shorter by several inches. "Who is responsible is unimportant to this effort."
"I think it's very relevant as it's my life you may be risking--not to mention that the Coactum Curse used to do this type of damage will get the practitioner sent to Azkaban for life. This woman is far beyond my ability to help; to go any further is dangerous to us both and could very well kill her." He glanced back at the bed, his expression troubled. He murmured, "Although that might be the kindest thing in the end."
"That's understood and why you've been brought in. Her primary Healer informed her family yesterday that he could do nothing more for her; they need a specialist to continue her care. You, specifically, were requested. The family is under the impression you had cured someone with this curse before. Besides, it's not the woman they're interested in, it's the child."
Harry's lip curled in disgust. "You must be joking."
Severus recognised his own intonations in those words and thus knew exactly what Harry meant; the baby was probably as far gone as the mother. Severus was thinking fast, as he was sure Harry was, too. A Coactum Curse--the same one used on Perrin his first year at Hogwarts. Its use meant the 'client' had probably been a high-ranking Death Eater at one point, part of the inner circle. That they 'knew' Harry had previously cured someone of its effects implied the involvement of a Malfoy, or possibly Perrin's stepfather, Tony Mendino, who had cast it on the boy. No one else could have known otherwise. Colch's next words drew him from his introspection.
"All you need do, Potter, is keep the mother alive long enough for someone else to deliver the child."
Harry was outraged. "Let me see if I have this straight. You want me to keep this woman--now a Revenant--alive so this, as yet unnamed, 'specialist' can deliver a child who probably won't live the night?" When Colch nodded, Harry took a deep breath and continued, "The baby is far too young, it will never survive."
The smile Colch gave him reminded Severus of an alligator he'd once seen in a Muggle zoo when he and Harry had made one of their rare excursions into London. The only thing missing was the sharp, tearing teeth and Severus had no doubt they were in there somewhere. In a condescending tone Colch replied, "Now there's where you're wrong, young Harry." He slicked his hair back from his sweaty forehead, his face pale despite his bravado. "Magister Stenman, who should be here any moment now, has made a breakthrough in keeping infants of this gestational age alive; his success rate has been astounding."
Harry stiffened at the name, his face going pale, his lip curled in disgust at the magnitude of Colch's deceit. Clearly about to refuse, he closed his mouth when there came the sound of rapid footsteps in the hallway; it was too late. As the handle on the door moved, they both turned to see the man who stepped through the opening. Harry bared his teeth for a second before his face went completely neutral.
Severus paid keen attention; so he was finally going to 'meet' the one human being Harry loathed more than the Malfoys. He had no doubt that had Harry known beforehand who the 'specialist' was, he would have refused, contract or no. Severus remembered Harry once telling him that Stenman, who he'd had to concede was a brilliant clinician, nevertheless 'felt' like something ancient that should never have been allowed to ooze out of the Primordial muck. He was--how had Harry put it?--'an embodiment of an old evil from before time'. And, after his first look at the handsome, almost beautiful man entering the room, with his black hair and familiar patrician features, Severus could understand in full why his husband thought so. His own canines bared, he felt the frisson of an old enmity work its way down his spine, for before him was an old nemesis, a former Death Eater, one with whom he'd refused to associate, even at the price of his own blood.
Severus knew immediately from his years with Harry that he was terrified in a wary way and determined in another. It was obvious he was aware of the danger Stenman represented. Even in a memory he could feel Harry's powerful shield firmly in place and he lauded his caution, remembering with perfect clarity his own encounters with the man and his 'research'.
He'd obviously changed his name, or perhaps it had always been Stenman, but to Severus and the others of the inner circle he'd only been known as Voldemort's unswerving devotee--his "Pet"--the ingenious psychopath who'd perfected the techniques to nurture the rare Gobbelworms in a human host. Consistently avoided by all but a few chosen disciples, the Pet had enjoyed a privileged place in the Dark Lord's hierarchy.
Severus shuddered, remembering the first time he'd seen one of the worms 'born'. A sharp set of mandibles like that of a preying mantis had ripped through the abdomen of a Muggle man, followed by a body which resembled a slick slug the size of a Kneazle. Once 'born', the greenish grey worm oozed a thin orange slime that sealed all bleeding and for several days afterward, it would feed on the host until he or she was consumed. Of course, part of Stenman's 'technique' had been the sustaining spells keeping the victims alive as the worms feasted. Because he'd claimed it 'wouldn't do to upset the babies', silencing spells were employed to quiet their screams, their lower faces blanked because the Pet grew bored with their never-ending, silent rictus of agony. Once the host eventually died, and Severus had always been amazed how long they'd held on, the mature worms were 'harvested' in a variety of rites for several of the darkest potions.
Refusing to touch the gods-forsaken creatures, let alone assist in brewing the potions requiring them, had earned him several sessions with Avery's "Lady"; he didn't yield on the issue. Lucius had watched from the sidelines, his silent approval the only positive thing remaining between them. Deeply disappointed with his then protégé, Voldemort finally called a halt to Avery's ministrations when Severus proved intractable to even the Dark Lord's personal 'persuasion', saying that if the coward didn't want the privilege, there were sufficient others who would.
Severus smiled grimly to himself; he'd only made two good decisions his seventeenth year, this being one of them. Even though he was still paying the price of his refusal to this day, he couldn't regret it. The years of reparative abuse he'd suffered at Voldemort's hands to regain the trust lost from the incident had been relatively easy to endure in light of the alternative--the irrefutable loss of his soul. Nor could he gainsay his other decision when two weeks later, barely healed physically from Voldemort's 'attention' and curse, he'd embarked on his convoluted, double-edged career with Dumbledore.
Coming back to the scene in front of him, Severus could sense the stalemate before he actually saw it. Stenman leant casually against the footboard of the mother's bed, staring hard at Harry through cold eyes the colour of dark topaz. Oblivious to the impasse, two orderlies wrestled into the room a large piece of furniture, much like a cot, but open with no front rails. Severus could feel the dormant magic around it much like the stasis spells the Pet had once used to immobilise the Muggle victims in his earlier work. So he intended to use an extension of that research to keep the infant alive? It made perverse sense to Severus; out of such evil something potentially good was made. He sighed fatalistically. Such was the nature of the Dark Arts.
His attention riveted on the other man, Harry stood straight and tall from his position at the woman's head, his eyes blazing. Given his white knuckled grip, Severus was certain the short headboard would have snapped had the wood been any thinner. As it was, the muscle again jumped in Harry's jaw and Severus began to get concerned that Harry would be unable to centre himself enough to do his work with the concentration it surely would require.
After several minutes of taut silence, broken only by the sounds of metal against metal and the occasional soft grunts of the orderlies moving the cot about, the tiny bed rested tucked up tight against the foot of the woman's bed. As the orderlies silently departed, Severus' attention was irresistibly drawn to the graceful flip of Stenman's elegant hands dismissing them. Fascinated despite himself, he idly thought it just wasn't right that such foulness could look so fair. His full, red magisterial robe shimmering in the light, Stenman even yawned and stretched gracefully.
Severus turned back to his spouse, studying the well-loved face from so long ago, a face and presence that had changed little as he'd matured, but had grown dearer to him in that time. Stenman might be handsome and well-favoured, but his Harry easily outshone him.
Stenman's movement drew him out of his reverie again. Straightening, his arms folded loosely across his chest, he dipped his head, saying, "Magister Potter," his very tone an insult.
Glaring, Harry didn't move. "Magister Stenman," he said coldly, the inflection as sharp as a knife.
Stenman chuckled softly and drawled, "My, the little cub has teeth." Then in a crisper tone, he added, "We've not much time. I assume you know what to do. Are you ready, Magister?"
Harry nodded tersely and both men moved into their respective places. Harry remained at the head of the bed and extended his arms over the woman's head, his hands poised to reach her temples. Severus was rather proud of Harry's calm demeanor; the fine stress lines around Harry's eyes and his unusual pallor, both of which were seen through the eyes of daily intimacy, were the only outward signs he exhibited of his prudent circumspection.
Stenman nonchalantly stepped to the patient's side, his hands hovering over her bare abdomen. Nodding their readiness to each other, both men's eyes began to close, Stenman staring blankly into the wall in front of him, a sure sign to Severus' mind that he didn't consider Harry much of a threat.
Severus thought this a very stupid assumption for anyone to make about Harry. Granted, his spouse did have an inconvenient reputation for gentleness which, to a dark wizard like Stenman, would make him appear weak; certainly not someone he would normally consider 'a threat'. However, given the very nature of Harry's defences, supported as they were by his well-hidden abilities, combined with his not-so-well-known temper, Stenman might just receive an unpleasant surprise. The very thought made Severus grin.
He approved as Harry's lids fell a heartbeat behind Stenman's, his distrustful attention focussed on the other healer. His frowning face smoothed only when Stenman committed them with a softly intoned, "Alpha," which Severus vaguely remembered as the invocation of a shared healing, the speaker calling the lead position. With Harry's murmured assent, his Sanos rang clearly over Stenman's muddier tone, and their hands descended in unison.
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TBC