Disclaimer: All Harry Potter people, places, things, or ideas (all Harry Potter nouns) belong to J. K. Rowlings. Ignacious Benford, Unusual Neurological Diseases Regarding Animagi, Potions for Medicinal Uses, and The Medicinal Value of Herbs are mine.
Chapter 4: The Search.
As the school term began, the medicine Poppy had given Minerva helped lesson the effects of the disease, but she began to utilize student participation and demonstrations more frequently. During the day, she was able to suppress some of the symptoms and simply became a recluse during the evening hours. Unfortunately a few months into the term the potions began to loose their effectiveness. St. Mungo's gave her a timetable between two years and two months at her visit just after the Christmas holiday.
In his sixth year now, Severus noticed the changes in the way his Transfiguration class was run. Most of the time the chalk was enchanted and wrote by itself while his professor dictated. And though the class was more attentive, being called on for demonstrations, it was still unusual to him to see so many of them.
Whatever was wrong, for the most part he observed that she held herself together during their chess matches, which had become a regular habit every other Thursday. But he noticed in late January that something had begun to fade in her. He waited by her office door patiently after knocking.
Slouching at her desk with her head in her hands, she knew who was at the door when she heard the knock. Minerva had been feeling particularly poor that day and wondered how long she could truly maintain the façade that she was fine. She instructed her guest to enter as she brought out the chessboard and made an effort to sit up straight.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Snape. I trust your studies have gone well over the past few weeks?" she politely inquired.
He nodded. "Yes. If I may ask though, Professor, why have we been doing so many demonstrations this year?"
From the minute she answered he knew she was concealing the real problem. "It requires the class to be more attentive."
The game proceeded in silence until Severus cleared his throat. "Professor, why don't you trust me?"
His bluntness surprised her and she took a moment to recover, focusing her eyes on the board and away from her young guest's piercing scrutiny. Finally she formulated a reply. "It has nothing to do with you, there are just certain matters that teachers do not discuss with students."
As if on cue to betray her, the shaking in her right hand suddenly grew worse as she tried to move her bishop. She stood, trying to mask the problem by pretending to rearrange her desk. She picked up a simple round glass candle holder that sat on her desk, one she had gotten for free when she ordered boxes of muggle chocolates for Christmas gifts one year. Suddenly the glass candle holder slipped from her wispy grasp as she was attempting to place it on the bookshelf. It crashed to the floor and broke. Severus immediately jumped to his feet. "Professor, are you alright?"
Minerva cleaned the mess up with her wand after dropping that too. "I'm fine, it's nothing you should worry about," she attempted to persuade him.
He remembered her concern for him and decided at that moment to return the favor. "Professor, people who are fine do not shake and drop things. If I might be permitted to ask, what's wrong?"
Turning back to face him, she sighed heavily as she dropped her wand again before placing it back in the pocket of her robes. "I'm… not well. I should not be admitting this to you, but I have Benford's Disease and I don't know how long I have left. It may revert back to a dormant stage within a few weeks, or I may only have another two months left. There is no cure for it," she admitted reluctantly.
He stared at her without speaking for a moment, feeling profoundly melancholy after hearing her explanation. It would happen that just when I finally have one person who wants to be on my side, I quickly loose the person. Then an idea occurred to him. "It looks like what the muggles call Parkinson's. Couldn't you-" she cut him off.
"Muggle medicinal treatments are too barbaric. I'm afraid the disease is worse than what you've perceived to be the muggle equivalent," she stated quietly, attempting not to betray her own deep sadness. "I have accepted that I am dying. Now that you know, so should you."
He stood and headed toward the door, feeling sickened at her response. Before leaving he turned and told her, "I think your having settled on the lack of options is ridiculous. I thought Gryffindors did not give up. Just because you have made peace with your death doesn't mean that I have to!"
Staggering back to her chair and sitting again, she sighed heavily and looked over at the closed door. Oh Severus, you don't know how right you are, she thought to herself as she began grading quizzes.
After his Friday classes, Severus headed toward the library. Entering the library, he headed directly toward the section on medicine and began scanning the shelves for anything of interest. After glancing at titles from the books on the first two shelves, he skipped the middle shelves and looked higher. At last Severus found the book he was looking for and reached up to retrieve it. Dust blanketed the thin, beetle-brown book. The title read Unusual Neurological Diseases Regarding Animagi. He quickly thumbed through the index and sighed with relief, having found what he sought.
He began reading aloud in a whispered voice, "Benford's Disease was discovered by the late Ignacius Benford. Before his condition became too severe, he was able to study himself, being a healer, and determine that the disease was linked to feline animagi. Though animagi have their own minds after having transformed, in rare cases a neural breakdown is caused by the influx of animal instincts. The nervous system itself begins to shut down. Benford, his form being a lynx, took note of this. The disease not only causes loss of motor functions but also a drop in the production of dopamine, causing the disease to mimic the muggle disease of Parkinson's. While it can at times revert to a dormant state, there is no known cure."
Brow furrowed in thought, he considered where to look next. The idea came to him when he glanced at his open backpack and spotted his corrected Potions essay. I need to find some sort of medical potions book and possibly also an herb book, he realized. Standing, he began scanning the shelves again. After forty-five minutes of strenuous searching he had located Potions for Medicinal Uses and The Medicinal Value of Herbs.
She needs something to restart her nervous system and increase dopamine production, he thought to himself as he began flipping through the index. On page 314 he found a potion that was supposed to boost a person's immunities. Studying the ingredients, he realized that the potion could be modified to help the nervous system by changing a few key ingredients. But there was still something else it needed.
Turning to page 539 he spotted it: a potion that increases the production of insulin in the pancreas. He compared the potion with the herbs in the volume of the herbs book and what he had learned about Benford's disease, trying to discover if the potion could be modified to increase the production of dopamine. Finally he had his answer: yes, but only in theory at the moment.
He pulled his notebook out of his schoolbag and quickly copied down the ingredients needed. After replacing the books on their respective shelves and putting his notebook into his bag, he stood and prepared to leave the library. However, to familiarly unfriendly shadows crossed his path as he approached the door. He would have continued walking and not looked at either of them, but they chose to block his path.
"What are you doing, Snivellous? Extra credit?" Sirus Black drawled.
"He's probably hiding from us, especially after last year," James added.
Severus rolled his eyes. "If you two nitwits must know, I'm just doing a bit of research. Now kindly move," he said curtly.
James stepped aside. "Come on, we don't have time for this. We need to finish that essay for Transfiguration before McGonagall gets on our case. She's not likely to let us off easy for the rest of our time here. We can harass him later. I'll just beat his house again."
Sirus took out his wand and pushed Severus against the wall, raising him off the ground a few feet with his wand. "I think you're loosing your nerve, Prongs. Snivellous can stay here for a while," he stated as both boys entered the library.
Saying he was annoyed would have been an understatement as he grabbed his wand, which he kept securely in an inside pocket of his school robes, and let himself down. He grabbed his schoolbag and dashed off toward his common room. Having arrived, he went over the ingredients again. I think I can find most of these at the apothecary's cart when we visit Hogsmeade tomorrow. For the rest I shall have to visit the Forbidden Forest, he decided.
(My thanks to Leta McGotor for reviewing :D)