Summary: The war is over for everyone but Harry. He is still fighting just to survive, but he won't make it on his own. Just when he's given up, help comes along.

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, but I do own my imagination which takes me on wonderful adventures.

Chapter 12: Finding the Cure

Over desert, Severus brought up a new topic. "On my way over here before lunch, I passed 'The Hot House'…"

"Let me guess," Harry interrupted with a grin, "'The Hot House' is a bakery?"

"No – it's a plant nursery."

"Oh. Well, that was my next guess."

"Anyway, I decided to stop in to place an order for the plants I was low on. Callie gave me this." He handed a leaflet to Poppy, who placed it on the table between her and Harry. "She mentioned that Heather and Ivy would have a stall set up and Adair will be working the archery competition. She and Rowan are both participating in the Robin Hood reenactment. She also wanted me to remind you of the film you were going to see with her this evening."

"Oh! I remember going to this fair as a child. We always had a lot of fun. We should go!" She passed the advert to Harry.

"Who are these people you are talking about? Do you think I might be able to go to the fair, too? Is it muggle or magical?"

"Oh, I forget you don't know my family. I am the oldest, then there's my brother, Woodruff. Woody lives in Australia, though. Callie is my little sister – Calendula, actually. Rowan is her husband and Adair, Ivy and Heather are her children – my nephew and nieces. Anyway, the fair is a mixed happening. Mostly, it draws muggles, but it has magical elements. I see no reason for you not to be able to go once your repellant issue has been straightened out. The magical one shouldn't pose any problems, right, Severus?" They both turned to him.

"No, I believe that it should will not be cause for concern. It's three weeks from now anyway. I am hopeful that the antibiotic cream will be a simple, if long-awaited, cure. And I believe that one of the three versions of the regenerative will be successful, too. But if not, you just won't be able to use your magic. I don't foresee any problem there."

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After lunch, they passed by the apothecary ('Diablo's Drugs') where Severus stopped in and purchased 3 different antibiotic creams. Then they returned to the clinic and Severus led the way into the laboratory. "I would like to set up an experiment with the creams and samples of your mutated bacteria." He proceeded to lay out 6 petri dishes and labelled three, each with the name of one of the creams, and added some of the indicated cream to each. He then labelled the last three as controls – one to contain Harry's mutated skin bacteria and the other two to contain Severus' and Poppy's so there could be a comparison to what 'normal' should look like.

He reached for Harry's arm and scraped off a bit of skin into the three petri dishes to be used for the different salves. He also put a skin sample into a labelled control dish. Then he scraped some of his own skin cells into the fifth dish and Poppy's into the last one. Finally, he sealed each one and set them aside.

Using a microscope, Severus quickly look a look at each dish and made some notes. "We will give it an hour and then check to see if there has been any change."

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An hour later they returned to the lab, whereupon Severus checked the results. Keeping a stoic face, he invited Poppy to have a look as well, whispering to her not to give away anything she might discover.

Finally, Severus invited Harry to take a look. First, he looked at the three controls. In his sample, the shapes were purple and oblong. However, in both Severus' and Poppy's skin samples, the cells were pale yellow and round. He then viewed each of the 3 cream samples and noticed that in all of them there were circular shapes. In one, the shapes seemed to be linked in a chain, in the second and third they were separated, but one sample contained an orangey-yellow shape and one showed a flattened bluish shape.

"It seems that this one," he indicated the orangey-yellow dish, "matches your samples the closest. Does that mean that this cream is the one that works?"

"Yes, I believe so. The sample with the oblong shapes, obviously, is your current skin bacteria – the mutated version. You can see it was affected by all three creams. The round yellowish shape you see in our samples is what it should look like, so it is clear we are headed in the proper direction. The cream giving the orange colour seems to be the most promising. But I would like to give it a bit longer to see what happens. I am also going to set up another three cream trials. Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke," he smiled. "If by tomorrow morning, the change is still evident in both samples, then I believe we will have found our answer. Poppy, before you come over tomorrow, please stop off again at the apothecary and buy out their supply of the ointment that appears to work. I have an idea for application, so I will take these samples with me now to work with towards that end."

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The next morning, Poppy apparated in with the results of the experiment. "Harry, Severus, I'm here!" She pulled out the various petri dishes and laid them out on the coffee table in the living room. A moment later, Severus joined her while drying off his hands. Harry entered just a moment behind with a tea tray.

"I checked the experiment before packing everything up to bring along with me. It is a clear case. The antibiotic that seemed to be working yesterday, has completely reversed the mutation. Both trials show the same results," she enthused. "Here you go, Severus," she said as she handed him a carton with 25 tubes of the salve.

Harry sat down abruptly. "It seems too good to be true. All this time and it was such an easy cure."

"Well, not to put a damper on it, but at this point, it is still just an experiment. We do have to see if it works on you and hope that you do not become resistant to it before the remedy has run its course. I believe 10 days is standard for most antibiotics."

"I assume you were planning for Harry to apply it evenly over his whole body all at once to keep the bacteria from becoming habituated and undergoing additional mutation. How do you plan to do that?" Poppy questioned.

"I thought I might be able to modify it into a bath oil that you can soak in twice a day. With these tubes that Poppy brought, I have everything I need to do it."

"That's a sound idea, Severus," Poppy remarked, nodding her head approvingly.

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A/N: Once again, I am reminding you that I have had no medical training. All my information comes from various internet sites that I have summarized and streamlined for the average reader. I apologize for any mistakes I may have made and would appreciate being notified about anything that needs to be fixed.

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