Lyra came back to consciousness slowly, fighting her way through the thick, clinging effects of whatever she'd been dosed with, instinctively reaching out to pull dark energy into herself, salve the burn of light magic that wouldn't go away. It was hard to say (because perspective), but she thought it was almost as bad now as it was right after Maïa woke her up, in the immediate aftermath of that fucking judgment curse.
It's not, Eris assured her.
Oh, well, fine. Fuck you, too.
Amusement tickled at the back of her mind, cheering her up a bit in spite of the fact that it felt like she'd been stabbed in the solar plexus every time she tried to breathe, and even with cool, dark magic flowing through her, she could still feel the burning of that cut on her arm and a hot line across her chest, and a somewhat more disturbing burn inside herself, where that fucking sunlight sword had managed to catch her in the shadows.
The stabbing pain was weird, she was pretty sure she hadn't been stabbed.
Something in there is broken, Eris informed her. It tore things when Maïa made you wake up after the fight. The Healer said you're lucky it didn't cut up anything important, being jerked around like that.
Ah. Probably her xiphoid process. That would make sense. On the whole, though, she was still glad Maïa had woken her up. Not because of Emma, that had been silly, but because she couldn't imagine how much worse she'd feel if she hadn't been able to immediately neutralise at least part of the effects of that last curse.
Wait. I don't remember Pomfrey saying that.
Well of course not, you were unconscious.
Did I know you can listen to shite going on while I'm unconscious?
Using your body to eavesdrop is a hell of a lot easier than operating the entire meat-puppet.
Lyra let out a little puff of laughter at Eris's dry tone, still slightly resentful of how difficult it was to be a physical creature, and immediately regretted it.
Yes, perhaps don't do that...
Oh, piss off. What else did I miss? Did they say why they weren't healing me?
She could tell she also still had a number of broken ribs (that was a more familiar, less concerning breathing-pain than the stabbing) and the transfiguration holding her left arm together had long-since unravelled. Someone had set and immobilised it, but the way it was throbbing, it couldn't have been fixed.
Someone had immobilised her entire body, actually, she realised, trying cautiously to raise her head. Or...maybe that was just the sedative? Had to be, she managed to lift her head a few inches after all with more effort. That might also be the reason she felt weak and feverish, but she had a nasty suspicion that was actually from the light magic leaching from her wounds. She vaguely recalled Snape saying something about interference, earlier, the first time she'd woken up.
And then before she could figure out what the hell was going on, Pomfrey had forced some potion down her throat, muttering about how impossible it was that she was awake at all.
Yes, Snape was telling you to stop channelling because it was interfering with his spells, washing them out as well as the light magic. He was annoyed that Pomfrey knocked you out because you were unconsciously resisting and attacking the light-tainted flesh, and—
A memory floated across the surface of her mind — Eris's, of Snape, absolutely scathing: "I'd take impossibly conscious and cooperative over unconscious resistance and counterproductive attacks on her own body, but yes, by all means, make my job even harder, Poppy!"
"When has Miss Black ever been cooperative, Severus?" Well that was fucking stupid, if she'd been given a choice of being cooperative and getting healed or not cooperating and being sedated (and not healed), she would have cooperated, obviously. "I'll take her not flooding the ward with dark magic and interfering with every other patient's healing, thanks very much!"
"Oh, for the love of the Dark—" He broke off, a paling snapping into existence around them a second later. (It was still in place, Lyra could feel it when she reached out to the edge of the curtained bay, so either Snape was really fucking good at containment magics, or this hadn't been very long ago. It really could go either way.)
"Much good that does now, Severus..."
"She will inevitably wake up again, Poppy!"
"I gave her a double measure of Shalin's. She'll be out until Tuesday without the antidote."
"As I'm quite certain you didn't dissolve half a gram of raw opium in it first, I'll put an entire galleon on her coming around before sunrise."
"Don't be ridiculous, Severus!"
Lyra forced her eyes open, fairly certain it wasn't sunrise yet. She was on the inside wall of the ward, probably Snape's doing — she'd have to thank him if so, because even the moonlight filtering around the curtain felt uncomfortably bright. Or maybe just complain about him not moving her somewhere in the dungeons where there was no light at all, she decided, letting her head flop to the side to see if her wand was on her bedside table.
It wasn't, which wasn't really a surprise — Pomfrey had probably confiscated it again. (Lyra was really starting to hate that woman...) What was, was a near-illegible note, folded into a tent so she'd be sure to see it:
As you are the worst patient I have ever had the misfortune to treat and incapable of not being a contrary little bint even while unconscious, I have decided to abandon further efforts to heal you directly in favour of working on a potion to resolve the light-magic concentrations throughout your animus.
Your condition is serious and deteriorating, but not dire. If you wake before I return, you may attempt to halt the deterioration by gaining control over your instinctive destruction of the tissues tainted by light magic, particularly your blood, and Poppy owes me a galleon. The lassitude from the Shalin's she dosed you with should fade within an hour or two. Do not remove the blanket unless you are capable of using reflexive charms to maintain homeostasis. Light magic discomfort is less likely to kill you than a fever of one-hundred and three.
Lyra was, in fact, capable of using reflexive charms to control her body temperature. She didn't even need a wand, since the charm in question was focused within her own body. She was not, however, capable of using wandless magic precisely enough to remove only the uncomfortably warm blanket she hadn't even noticed until she'd read the note, but now couldn't ignore.
Damn it, Snape...
There was no way she could ignore it well enough to do focusing exercises, and while she would generally take any excuse to not do focusing exercises, even she would admit that instinctively destroying her own blood and/or attacking various internal organs because they had been tainted by light magic sounded like a bad fucking idea.
There was only one thing for it — she had to actually physically move the thing. Which was a conclusion much more easily come to than carried out. Shalin's Sleep Elixir didn't normally make her arms feel about four times heavier than they actually were, but then, she generally wasn't nearly as exhausted as she had been in the wake of literally the best fight ever when people tried to sedate her, so that might have something to do with it, she mused — focusing on the academic question of why this was so fucking hard to do to avoid focusing on how much every joint in her wand-arm ached as she wormed her fingers free of the sheet and dragged the enchanted blanket to the floor.
She started shivering immediately and shivering hurt, but the pain was less distracting than the tingle of light magic acting on her. It only took a few seconds for her to get Dru's homeostasis charm working. It took substantially longer to master the subconscious need to do something about the fucking light magic inside her. Even knowing that she couldn't annihilate it without hurting herself, it felt fundamentally wrong to just leave it, poison spreading through her veins. Especially since she wasn't entirely sure Snape knew what he was talking about — letting light magic just circulate in her body might be less destructive than trying to kill it if she were human, but who the hell knew what it would do to shadow-kin?
She certainly felt more ill when she managed to stop fighting it...but it was hard to say whether that was the light magic at work or just the fact that the idea of deliberately not fighting something that was hurting her made her feel sick.
Bella says yes, the contamination will feel worse when you stop fighting it, but making yourself anaemic will hurt you more in the long run.
Lyra pouted at the goddess. No one asked her! Whatever was going on with Lyra was really none of Bella's business.
I did, actually.
What? Why?
Because, ducky, Bella has far more experience with healing serious injuries than you do.
She's not shadow-kin, and how often has she actually gotten hit with serious light battlemagic?
She says only a handful of times, and she took you being shadow-kin into account. She also says it will be easier to leave the light contamination alone if you focus on fixing the physical injuries instead.
Lyra projected another pout at the goddess, mostly because, yes, now that had been pointed out, it did make sense.
Also, if you're pretending to be Dru controlling your body temperature, you might as well use the metabolism trick, too.
What?
I don't know. Here, you talk to her.
Wait, what? Before that thought was even fully articulated, Eris tugged at her consciousness, not pulling her completely from her body as she had over Walpurgis, but just sort of...stretching an extension of Lyra through herself, to...
"Excellent. Until then, I'll look forward to meeting your like-minded friends," Bella drawled in French, grinning at a vaguely familiar witch. Polish National Library Acquisitions Agent Kowalczyk, she thought at Lyra. You met at Zee's wedding. Why are you in my head?
Because I am not a post-owl, Eris said firmly, projecting an avatar just to glare at them. Even for Bellatrices. If you want to talk to each other, you can talk to each other without making me repeat everything!
So you finally realised how annoying it is when you ask us to tell people things for you, and thought the solution to this would be to help Lyra cheat at legilimency as well as occlumency?
Eris glowered at her. Yes.
Well, Lyra was fine with that. Though she had sort of been doing something, back in her body...
It's fine, I'm keeping your charm in place.
Well, in that case, not being in her maddeningly poisoned body at the moment sounded like a great idea. This is what legilimency feels like? Weird...
Ugh, no, not really, Bella said unhelpfully, continuing to extricate herself from her meeting with the Polish Librarian. Proper legilimency actually requires forcing part of your mind to resonate with someone else's. You're just reaching through the connection between Eris and myself, which doesn't really require any mind-magic on your part since you already resonate with Eris. She doesn't really help you do proper occlumency, either.
She pushed a memory of performing reciprocal legilimency at Lyra, following an extension of Not-Professor Riddle's mind back to his own, mimicking the weird little twist of magic that let him match the frequency of her mind to infiltrate his.
Lyra pushed the memory away because she really didn't want to know what the fuck had been going on in Not-Professor Riddle's head at that moment. Or ever. Honestly, she didn't even really care about the legilimency thing. What was Eris talking about, metabolism trick?
Your lack of curiosity about subjects you don't already have an affinity for is fucking criminal.
Shut up and answer my question!
You do realise the inherent contradiction—
Lyra cut off her alter-ego's amused snark with an inarticulate wave of frustration and annoyance.
Oh, lighten up. Taking the piss with everyone else when you can't stand a bit of teasing yourself is exceedingly hypocritical, you know.
Bella, just explain the thing, Eris prodded her.
I already explained the thing, Eris, so that you could explain the thing. You know how we hate repeating ourselves. Her amusement at the sharp prickles Eris's displeasure at the back of her mind rippled around them, cool and playful. Fine, fine. I know you're familiar with the Fournier Healing Limitation.
She was, yes. The ability of a body to heal was limited by its ability to extract energy and raw materials for healing from food — proteins and calcium and so on. (Fournier was one of those theorists who managed to get obnoxiously famous for stating the fucking obvious.) Which implied... You came up with a way to speed up your metabolism to heal faster?
More amusement. No, Dru came up with a way to slow down her metabolism so she didn't have to eat as often, hence the joke.
That was...not nearly as surprising as it should be. Everyone said Lyra was insane — and Bella — but compared to Dru, they were paragons of mental health.
Compared to most Seers with her degree of deviation, Dru is a paragon of mental health, Bella observed drily.
Dru's a Seer? That...actually might explain kind of a lot, honestly...
Yet more amusement. Yes, though it doesn't explain nearly everything that's just fucking bizarre about her. Hating food, yes. Being able to decide she doesn't need to eat as often, no.
Well, obviously that's something people can learn. Bella obviously had, and she'd assumed Lyra would know it too, so.
It's something we can learn — she taught me when we started working on the runic augmentation project—
I thought you said I just didn't have the healing support I would need to manage that!
You don't. I just forgot you wouldn't know the trick, so even if you had constant access to a healer who was willing to help you, knowing full well you were going to turn right around and break yourself again — rarer than you might expect, proper healers can be awfully squeamish about enabling self-destructive behaviours — you wouldn't be able to keep up with the healing. Anyway, it's not something most people can learn, as far as I can tell. Pretty much just metamorphs, energy-healers, and us. So be aware that using it in front of other people may be a bit of a hint there's something fae about you. Though I suppose if they notice, you can just tell them that it's something you inherited from Dru, and imply that all the other weirdly inhuman shite about you is also just a consequence of being half whatever she is, so— Actually, never mind. Do that, it'll be funny — she's still claiming that she's human, as though humans can decide that ageing is unpleasant so they're just not going to.
What?
Right, I suppose that wouldn't have been terribly noticeable yet in Sixty-Three. Ageing is just so passé. Why would anyone? Her channelling threshold is still noticeably increasing, too.
Well, it wasn't like Lyra hadn't already known Dru wasn't human, though she still didn't know what she was. (And of course it was impossible to tell if Bella knew, which was just annoying...) Wait. Does that mean you've actually seen her in person since leaving Azkaban? Why?
Yes, I needed her to invite me to a party because assassination is not the answer to all of life's annoying little problems, such as wards inconveniently placed between yourself and people you want to assassinate. Lyra was definitely going to have to see if she could figure out who Bella had murdered and why, because that was just teasing. Do you want to learn the trick or not?
What? Yes, of course I want to learn the trick, what kind of stupid question...
More amusement. Yes, well. This may be a bit more difficult for you since you still can't do proper occlumency for shite, and Dru taught me by just legilimising me and demonstrating how to access that part of my mind by doing it herself (Dru wasn't a legilimens, but Lyra really couldn't bring herself to be surprised at the idea of her legilimising Bella and fiddling with her autonomic processes directly anyway), but I think if you watch what I'm doing, you'll be able to figure it out...
"Believe me, Miss Black, if it were possible to safely transfer you to be someone else's problem, I would do so! Gladly! As it's not, it will be much easier on both of us if you simply accept the fact that you will be remaining here for at least seven more days."
"Two. That's my final offer."
"This is not a negotiation, Miss Black!"
"I want to send a letter to my solicitor. Andromeda Tonks, I'm sure you've met."
An involuntary smirk tugged at the corner of Severus's mouth, in spite of his exhaustion. It was difficult to say whether Poppy or Minerva hated talking to Andromeda more. She'd sent more howlers to Minerva, but Minerva actually agreed with Andromeda that it was exceedingly obnoxious that students who arrived at Hogwarts already capable of intermediate conjuration should be forced to suffer the pace of their fellow first-years. She was certainly offended that anyone might question her teaching methods, but at least some degree of her irritation with Andromeda was redirected at Dumbledore and the Board for refusing to reconsider their asinine policy against advancing talented students ahead of their age cohort. Poppy, on the other hand, was viscerally offended by the mere suggestion that she not do everything she felt necessary to ensure the health and wellbeing of her patients, regardless of whether such patient was a bloody metamorph and their father a healer with far more expertise on the subject than Poppy.
Andromeda had come up to the school on multiple occasions to berate the healer for confining Dora to the Hospital Wing long after she'd morphed away whatever injury brought her there in the first place. Presumably Bellatrix assumed her 'aunt' would similarly intervene on her behalf, if only she could get word to her.
Severus had his doubts — Andromeda, like most people, might simply think it amusing to inconvenience the infuriating girl for a week or two. And in any case, "I suspect Madam Tonks would agree that you are in no state to be released from Hospital at the moment, Miss Black," he drawled, flicking the curtain aside.
She hissed at the sudden increase in the light-level of her bay. The sun hadn't properly risen yet, but she'd been complaining (inarticulately) about refracted moonlight being too bright the first time she'd woken, so he wasn't entirely surprised. He also wasn't surprised she'd flinched away from it, simply on reflex. The pain caused by the sudden movement was enough to make her gasp, forestalling her comment long enough for Poppy to get a word in first.
"Severus! Please explain to Miss Black that even if she is physically in any condition to be released — which she won't be — we cannot allow a magically unstable witch to—"
"I'm not magically unstable! And I definitely will be."
"You're suffering from acute soul-poisoning, Miss Black! The fact that this is not reflected in your anima suggests that you are — whether you are aware of it or not — suffering some degree of dissociation, which is the definition of magical instability!"
"Severus, please explain to Madam Pomfrey that she's a fucking idiot who apparently knows less about soul-magic than I do, and I'm not actually unstable!"
Severus felt he did a remarkable job keeping a level tone as he responded. "Sadly, I cannot, as you are the most deeply unstable individual I've ever had the displeasure of teaching." ("I meant magically, you arse!") "Though given that Miss Black was — and is — actively channelling dark magic to resist the light contamination, it is plausible that any effects of the contamination on her soul have been obscured by her efforts."
"Don't you start with me, Severus!" Poppy snapped, waving a piece of parchment at him. "Advising a patient to use wandless charms to monitor and control her own fever is exceedingly irresponsible, not to mention telling a child that her condition is deteriorating and demanding that she attempt to rein in reflexive magical responses—"
Ah, yes. The note. He'd largely forgotten about that, distracted as he was with matters in Slytherin and brewing the potion in his pocket. "I didn't actually think she would use magic to control her temperature," he lied. "I merely intended to impress upon her the importance of retaining the cooling blanket, regardless of the discomfort the proximity to light magic might have caused. Also, given that she's conscious, I believe you owe me a galleon." She didn't, of course — she'd never agreed to the bet — he just wasn't in the mood to be chided over not coddling the children, especially when the child in question was Bellatrix.
"Well, that was a stupid assumption," the 'child' in question drawled. "The blanket was distracting, and I am capable of doing magic— I'm even capable of doing focusing exercises! Because I'm not magically unstable."
Poppy rounded on her again. "A state of affairs which is not explained by the fact that you are capable of doing so! If anything, a dissociation allowing a child to cast magic without proper feedback from the animus is even more concerning than an inability to cast magic at all!"
"I'm not going to melt my own brain," she protested. "Also, I'm not a child!"
"I have yet to hear any reason which might give me cause to believe that claim, Miss Black!"
Which one? Severus wondered, trying not to smirk as he raised an eyebrow at the girl, inviting her to offer a remotely plausible explanation — because admittedly, he had none to offer which wouldn't implicate her as a black mage. Explaining why her anima wasn't light-tainted might itself be a step too far, honestly. Certainly there were healers at Saint Mungo's who could put it together from that alone. Especially if they'd been in the stands when she'd thrown...whatever that queer tri-coloured spell had been at the Cæciné girl. Severus hadn't recognised it, but he'd felt the chaotic impact on the local ambient magic all the way up in the stands. He strongly suspected it had had something to do with Eris, though he doubted anyone was likely to call her on it any more than they were to draw attention to whatever ritual Cæciné had used to heal her punctured lung in the field. Anyone who would recognise that sort of magic would almost certainly have a vested interest in not outing (other) white or black mages.
"Family secret."
Poppy rolled her eyes. "In that case, I would expect your Lord to have informed me that there is some reason to exclude the anomalous symptoms in analysing your condition!"
"I wouldn't," Bellatrix scowled. "Siri's probably thrilled to have a medical reason not to let me come home and annoy him while I recuperate."
The healer opened her mouth, presumably to reject that hypothesis in no uncertain terms, but apparently recalled that she had met Black before, and shut it again. The cowardly dog would almost certainly not hesitate to make her job harder and potentially undermine Bellatrix's healing to avoid dealing with her while injured and therefore bored. "I will write to Lord Black to confirm whether this is the case," she harrumphed after a moment, clearly prepared to be very put out with the man if he confirmed that this "family secret" was legitimate.
Severus managed to wait until she was halfway down the ward, stalking back to her office, and the curtain was closed, its privacy charms activated, before he noted, "Black could just lie, you realise."
"If he does, I'll make him regret it. She will have to let me go eventually. He'll probably just pretend he didn't see the letter for a few days, so by the time he admits it's safe for me to travel I'll be well enough to be out of bed."
"Which you are defining as...?" he asked, because quite frankly, he agreed with Poppy. Even if she had managed to pick up some of the senior Bellatrix's tricks, she wouldn't be well enough to leave her bed in "a few days". Not by the standards of anyone sane.
He couldn't say he was surprised she was conscious — obviously, he had predicted as much — but he rather felt as though he should be. Even setting aside the soul poisoning issue, she was in an undeniably pathetic state. There was hardly an inch of skin which wasn't bruised — being thrown into several trees would do that to a person — which made it less obvious that she had lost enough blood (due to both internal and external injuries, in addition to her instinctive attempts to destroy the light poisoning spreading through her blood) that she might have been mistaken for a frozen corpse before she'd awakened.
He was only too aware that the bones of her left forearm were still shattered; four different ribs still broken; muscles and ligaments in her left wrist and hip still torn (in addition to half a dozen serious strains and sprains from being thrown around the arena for half an hour). The injuries which had been inflicted with condensed sunlight were too strongly light-tainted to heal, and she still had internal lacerations and tearing from the dislocation of her broken sternum.
He'd managed to repair the traumatic damage to her spleen and kidneys, the ruptured lymphatic vessel draining fluid into the space around her lungs, and the blood vessels damaged by the tearing in her diaphragm (all relatively minor, slow-bleeding wounds which likely wouldn't have begun causing complications until this morning if left undetected, but still serious concerns best addressed immediately). He'd also broken the light curse preventing the cut on her left arm from being healed, for what good that did (it wasn't life-threatening, so he'd elected not to fight both Bellatrix and the light contamination to begin to heal it); set her arm and nose and immobilised her xiphoid process in its correct orientation (Miss Moreau had done well to stop further movement in the field, but it had hardly been in a position to begin healing); cleaned her burns and slapped a thick layer of healing salve over them to prevent infection; and poured a blood-replenishing potion down her throat.
She could use at least two more (she was still down nearly a litre, which was a significant volume for a person her size), but he doubted her body could support the production of more red blood cells at the moment, even with the resources provided by the potion. If he had the faintest idea whether shadow-kin could accept blood from humans, he might actually have suggested a transfusion. Mages were generally very uncomfortable about the idea of giving blood from one person to another, but he imagined the Blacks in particular were less squeamish about such things, at least within the House. Reggie had once told him that they'd used a blood magic adoption ritual until the late Eighteen Hundreds. He doubted Black or Bellatrix would hesitate to try it, though the difference in the tenor of their magic would present its own complications.
If anyone else were brought in in such a state, he would expect them to be in hospital for at least two weeks (one of which would be spent largely unconscious as her soul re-stabilised). In her place, the senior Bellatrix probably would have demanded someone cast the Last Resort on her and been out of bed the same day. Since Severus was the only person the junior Bellatrix could conceivably ask to cast that spell, and he had no intention of doing so — it would certainly keep her alive and even functional, but at the cost of excruciating pain and a true recovery time nearly three times as long as healing naturally (or rather, with the aid of less damaging healing spells) — he might expect her to be well enough to be released in four or five days (even knowing that she would completely disregard any advice to moderate her activity level after her release). If she could heal as quickly as the senior Bellatrix. He had no idea when or where the Blackheart had learned that particular occlumency trick — no one she'd tried to teach it to had managed to master it, suggesting that it was hardly common — so it was quite possible the junior Bellatrix was unfamiliar with it.
"Capable of breathing without feeling like I'm being stabbed, and probably walking."
Well, at least she didn't seem to think she'd be challenging the Cæciné girl to a rematch on Tuesday...though Severus would be shocked if she didn't do so by next Saturday. (And even more shocked if she didn't get her arse kicked again for her trouble. Assuming Cæciné was willing to beat the piss out of a half-healed lunatic.)
"Also, not actively being poisoned by light magic. Which I presume is why you're here?" she asked, clearly trying not to sound too desperately hopeful that the answer was yes.
He nodded, pulling a vial from his pocket and holding it up. If he hadn't been obliged to create it due to Bellatrix's entirely voluntary idiocy out in the arena, he might have sincerely enjoyed adapting it to work on her. He rarely had time or reason to experiment in terms of brewing these days. "Need I enumerate the potential costs and benefits of taking an experimental potion, and/or request specific permission from your House to offer you such a treatment?"
"No, I'll trust my healer's judgement on the matter, and technically you probably should, but Siri left me in your care and I don't want to wait to get an owl back from him, especially since he'll probably pretend he didn't get it until tomorrow, so I'm going to say that's tacit permission for you to treat me to the best of your abilities. Gimme." She held out her good hand. "Please," she added, when he didn't immediately pass it to her.
Withholding it was tempting, but, "Very well. I will stay to ensure there is no immediate adverse reaction, and cast a monitoring charm on you before I leave, which you will leave in place or there will be no second dose." He handed it over and let himself drop into the visitors' chair, utterly exhausted from the past...twenty-odd hours of political drama and emergency healing. He'd been awake for going on twenty-six, now... "Tell me if you notice any change in perception or—"
She didn't wait for him to finish the standard instructions, gulping the vial down as soon as she managed to uncork it and interrupting him with a sound that could only be called a moan. "Oh, that's good shite. You are officially my favourite healer. Well, you were already my favourite healer, but you know what I mean."
"That you haven't seen any other healers since you arrived in this universe?" he suggested, though it was slightly flattering.
"That's completely beside the point. And there is Pomfrey, and all the healers I saw in my old universe. I was counting them, too. Though two of them were mind-healers, and that's like, the lowest of low bars. Oh, and Tonks. Not the biggest fan of him, which doesn't have anything to do with his job, just the fact that he doesn't like me, but still, he is a healer, technically. And Dan, same thing. He's a muggle healer. Though I guess so is Emma, so maybe I misspoke. I do like Emma. Maybe she doesn't count as a healer anymore because she's our Speaker? Yeah, that seems reasonable. Yep." She nodded, popping the 'p'. "You're my favourite healer."
"Should I mark down unusual loquaciousness and inclinations to express fondness as potential side-effects, or are you simply that grateful for the potion?" Severus asked, genuinely uncertain. It would be unusual for such a side-effect to develop so quickly, but it was even more unusual for Bellatrix to express gratitude.
"Mmmm...maybe both. I don't dislike you, generally speaking, but I probably wouldn't tell you that because you're a sneaky bastard, you might find some way to take advantage of it." Right, so, lowered inhibitions... Given that she was half-mad all the time anyway, it was hard to say to precisely what degree her inhibitions had been lowered, but in any case, it was less surprising that the effect had developed so quickly if it was simply reinforcing her natural tendency to do whatever came into her head, rather than affecting her emotional range. "Speaking of Emma, though, I seem to recall Maïa waking me up because she was in the middle of a riot, which was silly, she was with Siri and Cissy, so she was fine, she wasn't even scared, but does suggest that I missed some things while I was...distracted. And then unconscious. So what's been going on out there?"
"I've spent the vast majority of the past eighteen hours here or in my laboratory. I've hardly been in the thick of the political discussions." Nor did he care to be, quite frankly. There were plenty of other people around who could ask pointed questions about the expected efficacy of a point-spell thrown openly at a foreign diplomat or foil Dumbledore and Crouch's more politically inept instincts. Mirabella, for one. Perhaps Flamel — Dumbledore would probably be more inclined to listen to her than he ever had been Severus, and trust her far more than he could be expected to trust Mirabella.
"Yeah, but you were up there in the stands for the riot, weren't you? What started it? And who won the task, by the way?"
"Hogwarts, obviously. You cannot sincerely have thought that the other schools would muster a counter to your defences."
"Well, no, I did tell Maïa that. But it was theoretically possible. Long odds, but still. I missed a riot?"
Lying in bed unable to move or even breathe without pain, suffering light magic poisoning, and she still managed to sound disappointed about that. He sighed. "Yes. I was stuck in the middle of the staff and guests," defending himself from various individuals who took exception to his calming their little outburst in the Great Hall earlier in the day, as well as several who took exception to the fact that he wasn't in Azkaban at this very moment for the crimes he had committed in his misspent youth, "but the prefects did well with the evacuation after they finally enlisted assistance to conjure an escape-slide, keeping the students safe and more or less orderly. I'm going to have to remember to recommend those involved in containing the situation and defending the students for some sort of commendation."
He had no idea who had been most directly involved from the other Houses (he assumed at least a few Hufflepuffs would have been), but he'd seen both Calvin and Missy earlier. Both of his seventh-year prefects had been rather the worse for wear. Calvin had been unconscious, exhausted by maintaining defensive palings, but Miessa had assured Severus that they'd gotten the younger students back to the Castle with no casualties and minimal injuries.
Sabine had been acting as the primary authority figure down in Slytherin when he'd taken a few minutes to check in, organising curse-checks with the assistance of the seventh-years who hadn't been out in the arena. His three other prefects (and two prefects-in-training) had been organising the prefects of the other Houses (none of whom practised or even discussed dealing with emergency situations) to take care of their own students and assisting in the Healers' Tent, which he understood had been expanded from its original purpose (dealing with task-related injuries) to attend to the myriad minor injuries which didn't merit a bed here or evacuation to Saint Mungo's, in order to stay near any injured younger students.
He'd assigned Morgana Yaxley to field inquiries from concerned parents as guests departed and the news filtered out to the rest of Britain that there'd been an incident at the school, and left them to it. They'd never discussed what to do in this particular set of (entirely unforeseen) circumstances, but Severus was confident that they knew what he expected of them and were sufficiently prepared to judge the situation on the ground and determine the highest priority actions to restore some semblance of order, both to Slytherin and the school at large.
It was, perhaps, the greatest indicator of his success with the House yet that he truly wasn't anxious over how his students were faring in the midst of the chaos. A very welcome one, after the disappointment of having to lecture several students and former students about their behaviour and the importance of keeping the peace earlier in the day. Yes, the near explosion down in the Great Hall had ostensibly been focused on the Gaels rather than the Death Eaters, but anyone with half a brain had to see that any outbreak of open violence would be used as an excuse to re-open the wounds from their last unsettled civil war, as well as to inflame the much greater conflict on the horizon. Had they learned nothing from the World Cup riot? (No, of course not, they were still headstrong teenagers, for all they had officially graduated from school.)
"Er...Sev?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. (He really needed a nap.) "Someone, quite possibly the same someone who thought they'd try to spark something off this morn– yesterday morning, at the Order of Merlin ceremony," he corrected himself, "used the excuse of fighting between certain Durmstrangers and those defending the Weasley twin you left in the stands to start throwing curses around the guest sections. Two casualties had been reported last I heard — both accidental deaths resulting from falls out of the stands. Neither were students, and none of the foreign dignitaries were harmed. Any number of students and bystanders were injured, though I can't say how many seriously.
"The judges, it appears, are bound to judge the Tournament in much the same way the Champions are bound to compete — none of them were able to intervene until the Task was officially complete, at which point the other Headmasters attended to their own students. Lovegood came up to help with the Hogwarts evacuation." Which had already been well under way, thanks in no small part to his Slytherins. "Flamel and Delacour headed down to assist with the evacuation on the ground, I believe. Dumbledore tried to intimidate the masses into passivity, and when that didn't work, began throwing around crowd-control stunners and restraining jinxes en masse."
"But...wouldn't that just take out the civilians? At least mostly. I mean, those aren't exactly hard to block if you know anything about fighting. And I'm pretty sure there's laws about that. At least, there are in my world. Maybe not here? If they got rid of them in the war and then never reinstated them, or something? Still, I thought the Light cared about shite like knocking out civilians because they're in the way."
"It would, there are, and yes, the Light are supposed to care about trivial matters such as laws and not committing mass assault against bystanders, but Dumbledore always has been rather terrible at considering the implications of his actions, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. Shortly after the end of the Task, Mister Ryan, Miss Granger, and Mister Weasley used cooperative casting to direct and amplify a crowd-calming spell, which brought everyone back to their senses, including our Fearless Leader. I'm sure you will be able to convince one of the elves to show you the recording, even if they don't include it in the final edit of the Task."
"Oh, shite. Wait, I.C.W. laws are still in effect, right?" Severus nodded. "Okay, never mind, then. Damn, Maïa's going to be good at that whole Dark Lady thing — I mean, those wards were one thing, but improvising crowd control like that? There had to be five thousand people in the stands. Seriously. Fucking. Impressive." She smirked. "It's probably a good thing I can't really move right now, because I might have to go find her and snog her in public if I could."
Severus sincerely did not want to know about his students' sex lives. He did, however, want to know about, "That whole Dark Lady thing?"
Bellatrix grinned. "Yeah, don't tell her I said anything, but Eris and I think she could really shake things up. Social reform and stuff, you know? We're just trying to be subtle about it at the moment because Maïa doesn't realise that we were serious when we made that comment about her being a better Dark Lord than Riddle, and she was still all awkward and uncomfortable about it. And accused me of changing the subject, which I wasn't."
Severus pinched the bridge of his nose again. He sincerely did not want to contemplate the degree of social unrest Granger might be able to achieve with Bellatrix at her side...or vice versa. The comparison which came to mind was Cromwell backed by the senior Bellatrix, and that was far too horrifying to consider, especially when he'd been up for well over twenty-four hours now. Changing the subject seemed like an excellent idea, especially since Granger apparently hadn't been recruited as this Bellatrix's lady yet. "Aside from a greater tendency than usual to share aloud matters best left unspoken, have you noticed any other effects?"
"Eh?"
"The potion, Bellatrix."
"Well, yeah, I figured, just, I said something about not changing the subject and then you did, and it threw me, because why would anyone not want to talk about my girlfriend being a complete badass and someday definitely taking over Britain? But the joint aches reduced subjectively by about half, and the stinging at the actual contamination sites is...definitely noticeably weaker. I'm not sure, it might still be going down. The aches were cut pretty much immediately, which felt really nice, if not quite as nice as not being crucio'd.
"It's making me sort of floaty and like a little drunk, but not a lot — halfway through the second drink tipsy, you know? but maybe also a bit like smoking a joint while drinking— Siri might have a better comparison, but I haven't tried that many of his fun drugs yet."
Severus wasn't certain whether he should be concerned about Black exposing the younger Bellatrix to party drugs. On the one hand, they almost certainly wouldn't do her any harm, and Black's own experimentation with them was almost certainly an un-self-aware attempt to self-medicate, but on the other, it seemed professionally negligent to ignore anyone telling him that they (or someone they knew) were inexpertly attempting to correct the bioalchemic imbalances in their own brain with molly and wyrm and who knew what else.
Before he could make up his mind (he was too tired for this shite...), the girl continued. "Being floaty makes it a little harder to concentrate on the metabolism trick and remember that I'm supposed to be maintaining my temperature, and talk, which is probably also part of the reason I've said a few things I normally wouldn't. Distracted. I actually had to drop the healing meditation, but worth it."
He groaned. He really did need to sleep — he'd neglected to ask what other spells she may be using at the moment which might have an impact on the potion's effects. No, it normally wouldn't be a problem — most students couldn't cast any relevant spells wandlessly, and if they could they wouldn't be able to maintain more than just the charm to keep their fever down — but he should have known better than to assume Bellatrix was only using a single such spell. (And even if she were only using a single charm, he'd still need to get the arithmancy for it, probably. Just to analyse any residual interference and factor that in...)
"What?"
"What other magics are you maintaining at the moment?"
"Other than the homeostasis charm and the metabolism trick, nothing. I was still working on the tears in my diaphragm until Poppy started yelling at me—" Meditating on and semi-consciously directing her body's healing efforts, he presumed. Not nearly as effective as a proper healing charm, but notably more so than allowing nature to take its course at whatever speed. He was somewhat surprised that she was capable of focusing clearly enough to manage it, given that healing meditations were far more difficult to maintain than the average magic-focusing exercise. But then, she likely considered healing more effectively to be a higher priority than not drowning everyone around her in dark magic whenever she was distracted by some new and fascinating development nearby, so never mind. "—but that was too finicky, so I switched to bruises and contusions, and then I had to drop even that, because floaty."
"Is the metabolism trick what I think it is?"
"If you think it's using occlumency to fuck with your autonomic processes so you can beat the Fournier Limit, yes," she grinned. "It's surprisingly easy to maintain."
That had been what he thought it was — the senior Bellatrix had attempted to teach a handful of the more talented legilimens associated with the Cause, including Severus himself. Much as with her pseudo-metamorphy transfiguration trick, none of them had managed it, even de Mort. She hadn't mentioned where she'd learned it, but she'd theorised that it required a latent talent for metamorphy or energy healing or the like. Severus, privately, theorised that humans just weren't meant to have access to that part of their own minds.
"I'm not a metamorph," he reminded her.
"Well...yeah, I sort of guessed? I mean, I'd expect you to at least fix the nose if you were..."
Severus glowered at her, though his heart wasn't really in it. He had his father's nose, so if changing it were as easy as blinking, he probably would. "So, if you manage to permanently and detrimentally alter your autonomic processes attempting to replicate your alter-ego's ill-advised occlumency tricks, you're going to have to ask Selwyn to fix you."
She pulled a face. "I might actually write to Dru and ask for help before I'd voluntarily let Selwyn in my head. I mean, I know I can't stop her if she wants to legilimise me — I'm working on it. Sort of. I may've cursed myself in the foot by cursing Theo earlier, I need him to translate something for me. Theoretically working on it — but that doesn't mean I'm going to just invite her in."
"Dru?" Severus repeated.
"Yes, Dru. My mother, Dru. Completely neurotic genius seer? Claims she's definitely human, despite so obviously not being human it's fucking hilarious? Apparently she's Magistra Rosier in this universe, which is an altogether better and more respectable career than Lady Druella."
Severus just blinked at her for a long moment. He was familiar with the name — it was frankly impossible to be actively involved in Western academia without having run across it somewhere or other over the past decade or so. He wasn't entirely certain what her actual research area was, but analytic arithmancers were highly sought-after contributors on most collaborative projects, so hers was a fairly common name to see as second or third author in practically any discipline. She'd been involved with the Paris team who'd come up with that alchemical charms breakthrough...six or seven years ago, he thought. He just hadn't realised she was Bellatrix's mother. Yes, he was sure Reggie had mentioned her name at one point or another, but there were at least a hundred Rosiers, and he'd honestly thought both of Bellatrix's parents were long dead. Small bloody world...
Also, what the hell was she, if not human? It was surprisingly easy to believe that Bellatrix had been some sort of fae or demonic half-breed even before she'd become shadow-kin, but Narcissa, at least, was entirely human. Severus was quite confident that Lucius wouldn't have married her if her blood tests had suggested otherwise, regardless of how lovely and talented she was, or how ruthlessly effective a politician...
Bellatrix babbled on, oblivious to his mental wandering. "She'd be absolutely insufferable about me fucking it up — she's sort of insufferable whenever I make a mistake, actually, so she'd probably have something to say about me being here in the first place, too — but it's her trick and she does like fixing things so she'd probably help, and she's not nearly as scary as Selwyn. I mean, yes, she apparently learned how to do legilimency at some point despite not being a legilimens, but it's not like she's had eleven-hundred years to practise, so."
What? She didn't mean she'd learned the Legilimency Charm, non-legilimens learned that all the time, it would hardly be worthy of comment. But non-legilimens couldn't learn actual legilimency. "Even if the talent remained latent until it was triggered at some point in adulthood, she would still be a legilimens." That would be unusual, but not impossible in the same way as—
"No, she's not a legilimens. She doesn't have a talent for mind magic, latent or not, or for metamorphy or energy healing or weather witchery or performative magics. She just has a talent for learning shite, including copying other people's obscure magical talents." There was no such talent...unless it was a peculiar, heretofore unpublished-upon extension of omniglottalism. "Bella showed me the memory, she had to do reciprocal legilimency on Not-Professor Riddle while he legilimised Bella—" One could not perform reciprocal legilimency without actively matching the frequency of another mind, which meant, by definition, that one was a legilimens. "—then copy what he did to establish contact with her directly. So I guess if I needed her to fix me, she'd probably have to watch Harry legilimise me first — Eris says she'd let them in if we had to. I'm not going to fuck it up, though. It's not that hard to maintain, but I think I'd have to hold it in place for months before any changes sunk in enough to become permanent. If I stop thinking about it, it just slips back to normal.
"Anyway, I think the potion might have a general numbing effect, or that might just be that it's harder to focus on the pain, but I don't feel like I'm getting stabbed as deeply breathing, so that's good, but I think if I weren't using the homeostasis charm I'd probably be in trouble, because it's been fluctuating like mad."
Right. Yes. Focus. On the potion, not inane tangents. "I'm afraid I don't follow. The spell fluctuating is a good thing? Which homeostasis charm are you using?"
She gave him a lop-sided shrug. "The one Dru came up with because she doesn't like sweating and normal, constant heating and cooling charms are inelegant and get too hot or too cold. It monitors blood-temperature and corrects it every ten seconds, so you don't have to think about the specifics or even whether you're hot or cold, because thinking about whether you're physically uncomfortable is nearly as distracting and unpleasant as being uncomfortable, because you have to focus on the fact that you're a physical being, and— Hey, Eris, I just realised you and Dru have very similar views on inhabiting meat-puppets... Oh. No. Oops? But it's fine, Sev already knows, so."
"Was that an acknowledgment that you didn't know you were speaking aloud just then?" If so, that might also be a potential symptom...
"I thought you couldn't read my mind!"
So yes, then. "I can't. You were speaking aloud just then."
"Oh, shut up." Severus wasn't certain whether she was talking to him or the voice in her head. "Point is, Dru uses magic for literally everything, up to and including regulating her body temperature at all times, which is why the spell fluctuating is a good thing. It's supposed to do that, to compensate for the physical world constantly annoying Dru with its chaotic irregularities. My temperature would be all over the place if it weren't."
"That's...completely absurd," he muttered, referring to the arithmancy involved in developing a self-regulating spell to compensate for random environmental changes, and also in part to Bellatrix managing to cast and maintain it in her current state, especially without a wand. Though she seemed to think he was referring to the concept itself, or perhaps her mother's general existence.
"What's really absurd is how few people realise Dru's a total spaz. I mean, it probably doesn't help that it's rude to talk about bodily functions, so it just doesn't come up that normal people actually use toilets and don't just go into the loo so no one will see them using waste elimination spells, or that they don't use magic to completely avoid menstruating, but—"
"Any other symptoms?" Severus cut her off. Bellatrix's mother's menstrual cycle (or lack thereof) was not something he'd ever considered before, nor was it something he wanted to consider now. Or ever. He would admit to a morbid curiosity about how old she'd been when she realised normal people use toilets, but he had a policy against engaging with utter madness when at all possible. He could ask about the arithmancy of that homeostasis charm later.
"Hmmm... Magical, no. I mean, it is pushing back the light contamination, which is good, but that's what it's supposed to do, right? Mental, fuzzy and still a bit tipsy feeling, though it doesn't seem to be getting worse. Not sure if the reduction in pain perception is mental or physical, but either way, not complaining. Physically, I'm a bit queasy, but that might be because I'm starving. Bella did say that I'd have to eat more while I'm pushing my metabolism, which, obviously, sort of is the entire point, there. But I was waiting until Pomfrey buggered off to call an elf because it's probably going to take a while to convince them to feed me between meals — stupid snack policy — and she'd probably order them not to, and then you showed up, so."
Severus rolled his eyes. Yes, she would need to eat more. She could probably stand to eat more in general, actually — she was short for her age, even among the nobility, but she was underweight for her height as well. According to the updates Poppy had made to her chart while Severus was downstairs, she was concerned that there might be a delay in the girl's physical development due to her unhealthily low body fat percentage. She'd made a note to discuss the matter with Black, which discussion Severus imagined would go something like, Yeah, okay, she's a skinny bitch, I get that, but is Little Bella not being physically mature and capable of reproduction actually a concern? I mean, really...
"Hospital attendant?"
An elf appeared with a small pop. "How is Winky to assist Master Sev?" she asked, shooting a curious sideways glance at Bellatrix in her bed.
The girl offered what was probably a greeting in the elf's own language.
It was met by a frown. "Winky is to speak only English or French when humans are present, Miss Lyra. Winky was overcome before and forgot the rule when Mister Éanna was present, but Winky tries to be a good elf."
Bellatrix grimaced. "Fine, fine. Whatever..."
"Winky, please inform whoever is in charge of sending up meals and dispensing regular potions with food that Miss Black is to be fed on request, regardless of Poppy's standing order about snacks. I am also recommending that she take a nutrient potion every six hours."
"Yes, Master Sev, Winky will do this. Is there being anything else?"
"No, you may—"
"Can you send up my post with my breakfast tray?" Bellatrix interrupted.
The elf looked to Severus, apparently uncertain whether this was against Hospital rules. Honestly, he wasn't entirely certain. He didn't see the harm in it, though. He nodded.
"Yes, Winky is doing this, too."
"Cheers."
"Thank you, Winky, you may go."
She popped away, leaving Bellatrix smirking at the spot where she'd been standing. "How much you wanna bet I can convince her to steal my wand back from Pomfrey for me?"
On the one hand, Severus sincerely doubted that any of the elves would disobey a direct order not to return confiscated items to their owners, but on the other, he also doubted that anyone had thought to explicitly order each and every elf not to do so. And he suspected that Bellatrix wouldn't have offered the bet if she didn't think she could do it. He grimaced. "No bet."
"You're no fun. Thanks for that, though. I hadn't expected you to endorse healing shortcuts."
"I'm not endorsing healing shortcuts — transfiguring your arm back together and continuing to fight was asinine in the extreme, and it is certainly not a good idea for you to go playing with your basic bodily functions — but I sincerely doubt I can coerce you into stopping, and it will reflect poorly on me if a patient manages to starve herself to death in my care."
He could, of course, have refused to allow her extra meals or even withheld further doses of the sun-poisoning potion (it would almost certainly take several more, over the course of at least two days, to entirely neutralise the contamination), but he doubted that would stop her. She would simply have continued pushing herself until he and Poppy had to allow her extra meals, because they wouldn't let her starve to death. This was the alter-ego of a woman who had spent two years tearing her own body apart to master direct runic augmentation, for no reason other than sane people insisting it wasn't possible to do so, and he had no reason to believe this version was any less bloody-minded. If anything, the junior Bellatrix was probably more stubborn than the senior Bellatrix: she was a teenager, and teenagers invariably thought they knew their own limits better than anyone else. (And/or that they were exempt from such limits entirely.)
"Good, because I have no intention of staying here more than two days. Tuesday morning, I'm out."
"And you're in such a hurry because...?" She hadn't been nearly so eager to escape the Hospital Wing last time she'd been confined here. Yes, she had been suffering from Skele-Gro side-effects, but even taking that into account, it still seemed like there was an unusual sense of urgency to her desire to get out of here now.
"I need to convince Cæciné to be my duelling partner. Do you know how long I've been looking for one? Months. Since the World Cup. And she's perfect. I might be in love," she said, perfectly seriously.
Severus did not entirely manage to suppress an amused snort. "She nearly killed you. She took you out by throwing a curse at Miss Granger. And you might be in love?"
"Well, I don't know, I'd have to ask Siri probably, because emotions are weird, but I can't stop thinking about her and I need to be with her again. She's everything I could possibly want. I thought Montreve was just being poetic about finding your place in the world through another person's existence, but that suddenly seems shockingly literal and I think I actually get it, so yes, I might be in love."
Severus had the sudden premonition that this could not possibly end well. "That might be the most star-crossed thing I've ever heard," he said, not even bothering to try to keep his scorn for teenage romance out of his voice. "And I've been surrounded by students for the past fifteen years." And that wasn't even considering his own teenage years. Christ.
She had the temerity to pout at him. "It's not star-crossed, there's no House of Black to object anymore, and yes, okay, the Cæcinés probably would if we actually wanted to get married, but it's not like I want to marry her. I just want to spend every day from now until forever fighting her. Is that really so much to ask?" Her tone strongly implied that she didn't think so.
"Need I remind you that she very nearly murdered Miss Granger at the end of your duel?" he repeated. "Not to mention nearly killing you."
Bellatrix pulled a face. "I'm pretty sure she didn't mean to attack Maïa any more than I meant to attack Theo. She kept moving us away from anyone unconscious so they wouldn't get hit with a ricochet, so I doubt she would pull something like that intentionally. She was pretty out of it by the end though, probably cast at the first indication of movement or a foreign aura disturbing the ambient magic in that direction. I'm pretty sure that's how she kept targeting me before I fully stepped back into this plane. Which, by the way, is impressive as fuck, and yes, I'm aware that she nearly killed me. Did you not hear me say she's perfect?"
"No, it simply momentarily slipped my mind that you're insane."
"You are entitled to your opinion," she shot back lightly.
"I was under the impression you don't enjoy spending days or weeks at a time confined to hospital."
She pouted at him again. "I don't. But if I hadn't let her have a head start preparing the ground with fucking veela and lilin fire, and that stupid blood-magic earth-attunement thing, I'm pretty sure we'd've been more evenly matched."
"Not evenly enough for you to win — she is better trained than you are." That much had been obvious from the very start of their duel.
"I'm a fucking cursebreaker. She's a trainee battlemage. Of course she's better trained than I am! And good! Winning is so incredibly not the point. If she's better than I am, I won't have to hold back to avoid killing her. Evenly enough to avoid any more Judgement Curses and/or getting stabbed with condensed sunlight again, and we can just keep going until we're both too tired to kill each other, would be perfect. Like, Gilgamesh meeting Enkidu perfect. That's not the worst I've ever been beaten, if I hadn't been poisoned, I could have slept off the physical injuries."
"Your spleen was ruptured and both of your kidneys severely bruised, Bellatrix, not to mention the damage to your lymphatic system. You couldn't have just slept it off. You would, in fact, most likely have died in your sleep had you attempted to do so," he informed her, trying to sound serious and disapproving, rather than vaguely exasperated. His life (and the lives of those around him) might be significantly simpler if she were to simply die, but...he admittedly didn't hate this younger version of Bellatrix enough to actively wish her dead. Most of the time.
She rolled her eyes at him, the overconfident little bint. "You may not know this — I can't imagine why you would, actually — but if you beat a kid halfway to death enough times while their magic is still developing, they'll learn to heal themselves instinctively, at least of the life-threatening shite. If a ruptured spleen and a little organ bruising were enough to kill me, I'd have died when I was seven. About ten times over." Her lips twisted into a grim smirk. "Cygnus really didn't like me finding a way to resist his Imperius."
Severus really didn't want to believe that, but it was a well-known fact that magical children were more resilient than muggles for that exact reason — they instinctively protected themselves from impacts or burns or what have you. It was all too plausible that a magical child in a highly abusive environment would learn to unconsciously repair what ought to be life-threatening injuries...or at least a magical child with the degree of bodily awareness necessary to transfigure her own arm back together. He didn't think he'd developed an instinctive healing advantage from his own father kicking the shite out of him on a regular basis as a child...but then, that could also have been because Tobias had never beaten him to the point he might have died.
"Physical injuries that don't kill me immediately aren't likely to kill me days later, even without a healer on hand, as long as I'm not magically incapacitated, too. This might actually be the most fucked up I've been in... I don't know, a long time, just because of the light poisoning. And even with that, if you'd given me a wit-sharpening potion instead of letting Pomfrey knock me out again when I came around naturally, you probably could've gotten me to focus well enough to stop fighting you and making myself anaemic."
"Ah, yes, silly me, it simply didn't seem wise to give a stimulant to a patient already experiencing homeostatic irregularities and cardiac symptoms related to acute blood loss." Not that it had actually occurred to him, but if it had, he would have thought it a terrible idea.
"Oh, piss off, we both know you would've preferred I be conscious and cooperative, too." He felt his eyes narrow at her choice of wording, echoing his own from last night. "Eris overheard you telling off Pomfrey." Oh, that wasn't disturbing at all... "For the record, yes, you were right, I would have cooperated if I'd known what the fuck was going on."
"I'm sure Poppy will appreciate my impending I told you so. You will not, however, be fit to check out in forty-eight hours, regardless of how effective your healing tricks might be, much less be in any condition to challenge Miss Cæciné to a rematch."
"I'm not going to challenge her to a rematch on Tuesday, I just need to talk to her about it, as soon as possible."
Severus snorted as a completely ridiculous image popped into his head. (Gods and Powers, he really needed some sleep.)
"What?"
"I doubt you need concern yourself that someone else will ask her to Hogsmeade before you get your chance."
This Bellatrix, unfortunately, was as immune to teasing as her counterpart. She just rolled her eyes. "She can go to Hogsmeade with whoever she wants, but we need to negotiate a location where we'll be on level ground and half the bloody world isn't watching, and I want to find a good time before her weekend is full. So. Tuesday."
So, what Severus was hearing was, yes, Bellatrix was, in fact, concerned that someone might ask out the Cæciné girl before she had a chance to do so.
"Do you think you could convince Pomfrey to give me my wand back? Also, I want the recipe for whatever this is, just in case."
"You did hear me say that this potion is experimental, did you not? And I thought you intended to ask the elf to steal your wand back."
"I will if Pomfrey won't hand it over." ("She won't.") "And yes, I heard you say it's experimental, but it's great. It's been, what, twenty minutes?" Closer to half an hour. "And it definitely helped and I'm not dying, and I'm starting to feel less tipsy already. How long until I can take a second dose?"
Severus hesitated. He didn't really doubt that she'd be able to handle the magical effects of integrating too much of such a strongly dark potion too quickly. It was hardly likely to taint her aura to any appreciable degree even if he severely overestimated the amount necessary to counter the light contamination — which was actually a concern for upyri, whose magic did tend to be dark, but not to the same degree as the Blacks', and the primary reason it was recommended that they space out the doses. Overshooting the mark and going straight from sunlight poisoning to dark magic poisoning would be exceedingly unpleasant and potentially fatal.
He was far more concerned about the bioalchemical toxicity which might develop as a result of certain byproduct compounds reaching too high a concentration in her blood. Not only were human kidneys less efficient than those of upyri, but Bellatrix's had recently been damaged. Beyond that, it was difficult to say whether the exact same toxins would be produced and in what proportions, given the bioalchemic differences between species and the adjustments he'd made to the formula to account for the light magic contamination carried by the elemental sunlight contamination. As he'd told Emma, he was going to have to monitor that. And she was much smaller than the average human or upyri. The dose recommended had almost certainly been too much for someone of her body weight of either species, and he'd had no reference from which to adjust it, which was one of the reasons he'd been concerned about potential side-effects.
If she intended to speed her metabolism significantly throughout the entire process, he might be inclined to say the interval could be decreased...but increasing her metabolism alone might place a strain on her kidneys as well, he really couldn't say. Fuck it, he wasn't going to overthink this. The original recommendation had been six hours, he'd been planning on recommending twelve, just to be on the safe side before she confirmed that she was using the fast-healing trick. "Twelve hours."
"Twelve hours?" she echoed. "That's forever! I thought you were going to say...like three, maybe."
"Yes, twelve. If a blood sample taken at that time does not show significantly elevated levels of any toxic compounds compared to one taken last night and the one I will be taking momentarily. The potion was originally intended for upyri use. You will be taking it slowly in order to ensure you aren't poisoned by some unforeseen bioalchemic reaction," he explained firmly, using a muggle syringe to draw the blood from the bend in her elbow, rather than introduce more magic which might affect the accuracy of his analysis charms by using a healer's spell to collect the sample.
Bellatrix clearly found the whole process fascinating, watching as he found a vein and pierced it with the needle, but that didn't stop her complaining. "But Sev, I'd know by this point if—" She was cut off by the soft pop of a breakfast tray appearing on her bedside table. "Ooh, bacon!" She pulled it over to herself as soon as he released her arm, the enchantments on the board causing it to hover above her lap.
Severus rolled his eyes. "I am going to check on Slytherin, and then I am going to take a nap. I will be very put out if I am woken by my monitoring charms indicating that your vitals have fallen outside of acceptable ranges, especially since you are so confident that you are not going to suffer any adverse effects," he informed her, casting the spells in question.
"Eris says she won't let me die while you're gone, which is fucking hilarious because the first time she was in charge of this body, she forgot to breathe, but..." she trailed off absently, opening one of the letters the elf had tucked under a carafe of cider. "Huh. Emma says Maïa was sitting out in the corridor all afternoon yesterday. Was she there when you came in earlier?"
"I believe she was forced to return to your Tower at curfew. I expect she will return after breakfast."
"Why? Emma also said you told them I wouldn't be allowed visitors..."
"I did, yes."
"Wonder what that's about..."
"It is a mystery, truly," Severus drawled, flicking the curtain back, drawing a pained squeak from the girl. The sun had well and truly risen now, even if it wasn't directly falling on her bed.
"Are you being sarcastic? I can never tell..."
Honestly, he wasn't entirely certain himself. He had intended to be, but on reflection he did have a difficult time seeing how the Granger girl could be so very fond of Bellatrix, so. (He really needed some sleep.)