"~Are you going to insist that we stay in bed until the healer you called for arrives or was breakfast in bed acceptable?~" Voldemort asked grumpily. They had finished their food and the dishes had been magically removed.
"~That depends, are you going to be difficult about your own check up?~" Nagini hissed pensively.
"~I don't need one!~" Voldemort hissed back in outrage.
"~You do if you want to keep the other Speakers,~" Nagini told him flatly, her tone accepting no argument. Her first hatchling grumbled a bit but eventually gave her a reluctant nod of agreement. Nagini, in turn, gave a satisfied hiss and didn't object when Voldemort got the other two out of bed.
"Up! Strip, both of you," Voldemort ordered with a glower aimed at his familiar.
"No," Harry said flatly even as he got out of their joint bed. He was tense and, to Severus' eye, ready to bolt.
"It has nothing to do with anything indecent," Voldemort grumbled. "I simply need to see what damage we will be fixing. It isn't like I wont find out when the healer arrives. Not to mention the fact that we will be sleeping in the same bed, platonically, from now on. In any case I... can't have sex, perhaps ever again. Wormtail botched the ritual potion too much. The cost of my resurrection."
Harry looked over at his potions professor and posed the obvious, to him, question. "How bad was he at potions?"
"Lupin was the only one of the group who had any real skill in the art," Severus scowled darkly. A quick wandless spell had both himself and his charge naked but for their boxers. Harry barely had the chance to realize what the coolness of air against his skin meant before Voldemort hit them both with canceling and revealing spells to strop away any glamours. The shocked silence at the marks laid bare on the skin of both captives had Harry fighting not to physically cringe. As it was he refused to look at them.
"He's too thin," Voldemort commented so blandly that it made Harry mentally flinch.
"I... don't know that I can heal all of this," Severus said with a hard swallow. He, himself, was on the too thin side but he wasn't so light as to clearly show his own ribs through taunt papery skin matched to hollow cheeks.
"We will wait for the healer to decide that. I will grant you access to a potions lab for brewing. You will work with the healer to get you both back to a decent level of health. Narcissa may act as your official monitor but I know for a fact that you maintain a similar certification," Voldemort said stiffly. "If I have to treat you like children to ensure that you are healthy I will."
Harry could feel the rage building behind his scar and knew that he was going to be screaming or unconscious or both before all of this was over.
"Noted," Severus answered, mouth dry as he approached his clearly skittish charge. The moment he touched Harry the younger wizard tried to blindly bolt only to find himself caught up in strong arms, one set bare and one set clad in black robe sleeves. It was the last straw, Harry fought back as tears silently streamed down his face, blinding him even as he sightlessly struck out at the two older men.
"~Sorely wounded hatchling,~" Nagini hissed in sympathy as the older two wizards were forced to subdue him, holding him close in their arms. She watched as the pair looked up into the other's face in distress at the condition of the youngest as he struggled futily in their arms.
Harry's ribs and bones jutting through his flesh. The concealing illusions now ripped away to reveal how little of the scarred flesh he truly had to clad his bones. Eventually, Harry drooped in their grasp. Unable to keep up his original frantic struggle with still silent tear tracks marking his face the teen surrendered to their gentle yet firm hold.
"I don't care what excuse Dumbledore or anyone else gives he's not going back," Severus half snarled. "If that means I blood adopt him and claim him under both the life debt owed to his father and the blood sworn bond I had with his mother then I will do it before the sunsets this day! On my life and magic do I swear this!"
"By your oath so mote it be!" Voldemort's voice cracked out, laced with power, accepting the declaration of intent to adopt the teen in their arms. "From this day forwards you are both counted under the protection of the House of Slytherin, the House of Peverell, the House of Gaunt, and the House of Riddle. Any who seek to do you harm must also contend with me as the family Lord! You are mine!"
Severus hissed and Harry twitched as they were engulfed in the man's magic. A slight pain in the Dark Mark and the scar from the Resurrection Ritual signaled the change in their status. The magic lingered, changing the brand from a serpent and skull into a royal blue cobra with flared hood wrapped protectively around a black panther and its cub. Harry's ritual scar, unable to change in the same fashion due to the lingering ritual magic, became outlined in royal blue with a black panther curled around a cub closer to the body. The blue scar very clearly shielded the black panther pair of parent and child protectively.
"My two wounded panthers," Voldemort whispered as he hugged them both close. His grip on them calmed his previously building rage back into low burning embers. He would get whoever did this to the pair but for the moment they were safe in his arms, hidden away in his rooms, guarded by himself and his familiar. It would have to be enough until he could utterly destroy those who had hurt his panthers.
"~My hatchlings,~" Nagini affirmed, circling them as she flared her own magic to officially add her claim to the nearly naked pair alongside her stubborn first Speaker.
"Well, that's one way to make sure my new patients are taken care of," a woman's voice said archly.
*+ovo+*
A/n: It got too long so I split it up