The Wizard of Gotham
by Skysaber
Chapter Four
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The thing about killing Snape is that it's so deeply soul-satisfying that no one can do it just once!
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Pamela Isley could hardly have been more pleased with herself.
She had graciously said nothing when her newest devoted follower said a few words that made Ivan disgorge the greasy-haired one, who wisely did not grumble too loudly about the experience... Well, not after Ivan ate him the second time, anyway. (After that, the sour one knew to heed the danger signal when her eyes flashed green).
Then, leaving Harry to care for her plants, she had followed this Dumbledore person to a nearby old brick building, through a fire that glowed green when you threw a pinch of powder into it and said "Hogwarts" (a very interesting herb, by the way, also known as the woolly croton and liked sandy or rocky soils), and into a castle in Scotland after a somewhat dizzying ride!
Traveling by anything green had to be approved of, even if it was fire, and to name a castle after an obscure but lovable plant was something she was heartily in favor of.
Oh, naturally they had to take the partially digested professor to a hospital wing. She couldn't call him greasy-haired any longer as Ivan had already eaten it all, along with most of the man's clothes, his wand, and a few measly outer layers of skin and muscle tissue.
Well, it was his own fault for attacking Harry that way!
Besides, he didn't really need those fingers anyway. Three per hand was already far more than a stinking animal like him needed, in her opinion. And toes were highly overrated, he should be glad not to have more than one!
But just to be sure that he didn't get an idea about trying that again she patted his clothes in a fake show of concern, leaving behind a seed for a giant sequoia on his trouser leg.
One of the largest living things on earth, far larger even than sperm whales, and its seed was smaller than a grain of rice.
They passed hundreds of students, who stared in something akin to awe as Dumbledore (who, she picked up from conversation, was a headmaster, and this was his school) levitated the ravaged body of their potions master past.
Pamela gave regal nods to any that met her eyes, feeling generous.
However, no sooner had the trio of adults walked into what she would later learn was the hospital wing, than Dumbledore called out to a recently arrived Madam Pomphrey, "Ah, Poppy" (Pamela once again found herself delighted by the prevalence of flower names) "Professor Snape requires your attention, as well as..."
Then that dratted Headmaster shot Pamela in the back with one of those stunning things!
As he moved her stunned body through the air and to a second bed, the aged headmaster continued chatting, "Lily Evans is not quite herself, I've noticed. No doubt you are as surprised as I to find her still alive, but I fear that whatever was done to her in place of death may well have cost her memory. That will need to be restored, of course. But if you would be so kind as to check her out for other lingering curses, aftereffects or enchantments?"
Poppy was already busy with her new patients. After casting a quick numbing curse at Snape, who moaned pitifully on his bed, she turned her full attention to the woman who looked a bit like Lily.
In truth, Poison Ivy did bear a decent resemblance, but not strong enough to convince Lily's old friends or the nurse who'd treated her injuries at school. However, offsetting that was the fact that people TRUSTED Headmaster Dumbledore, and he said this was her.
Naturally, if he'd said a potted plant was Lily Evans Potter, those closest to him (and indeed, most of the wizarding world) would instantly have believed this declaration.
A bit sad, as he wasn't thinking too clearly at present. Poison Ivy had used some very potent pheromones in large doses to cause him to trust her, yet he had a mind shielded by steel bands of Occlumency. However, he was not immune to poisons, even pollen based ones. So his physiology reacted, even while his mind was protected, leading to an emotion/reason conflict, that carried just a hint of confusion, and befuddled him enough to not notice either.
In consequence, Ivy had managed to cause that trust to form, but was not able to control his actions. And, as a result of his formidable mental shields, he had subconsciously sought a reason for that trust until he'd found one deemed suitable.
Thus, seeing as she had Harry, he imagined her as one of two people whom he would have trusted raising Harry - and only one of those was a woman with red hair.
According to that line of reasoning, she had to be Lily Potter.
Poppy, like so many others, simply believed him when he conveyed this conclusion to her. Part of that was the intense belief in him shared by most magical families, but also that was due in large part to the fact that, in a world of magic, it was possible to have your form altered to a greater or lesser extent, and they just had to deal with it whenever that came up.
And, indeed, Madam Pomphrey's diagnostic charms did reveal some rather extensive physical and mental damage to the patient, poisoned by some extremely rare and magical herbs, and mutated by her exposure to them.
This sort of thing was actually not that uncommon in magical England. Poppy saw three or four cases like it per semester, just not this extensive.
"Well," Poppy declared, when she was done casting those charms. "Lily has enough toxins in her system to kill every student at Hogwarts, and her whole magical core is devoted to coping with that. I'm not surprised the poor dear has trouble remembering things. You recall the Longbottoms? It's obvious to me she's been tortured, probably before You-Know-Who got to Harry, as the wounds are roughly that old. This sort of thing is usually seen to by the long-term ward at St. Mungos, but since all I'm detecting are plant-based injuries, except for a few months-old bruises, Pomona Sprout ought to be able to help me get rid of the worst of the damage. After that, we'll see."
"How is the integrity of her blood?" the Headmaster asked intently.
The poor medi-witch just shrugged. "It's over half chlorophyll by now. Some partial toxic plant transfiguration, I'd guess. But I never heard about You-Know-Who being into that sort of torment."
"Ah," Dumbledore nodded sagely. "I am afraid that Voldemort was given to experimentation in a wide variety of fields. I am not surprised that he found himself branching out into new territory in search of ways to debilitate or injure his enemies. That would also explain how Lily has survived. If he was more intent on performing experiments on her to expand his knowledge of torture and disfigurement, than in her immediate demise, then I could well see her being Portkeyed off to be mutilated while Voldemort remained to murder her son, as he did not view her as any immediate threat to him. That could also explain how she might have escaped, turned loose by a Death Eater torturer who would rather not be caught holding the bag, as it were, after his master got destroyed. But it would seem this did not happen, I am afraid, in time for her to escape injury altogether."
He sighed, shaking his head wearily at the memory of those awful times.
Drawing a fortifying breath of fresh air into his lungs, he bounced back to his usually chipper self. "Well, I cannot begin to express how glad I am to find her alive. Do you need any assistance to properly restore her? I must insist that her blood, above all, be restored to as pure a state as possible."
"Many of her memory blocks are totally gone," Pomphrey confirmed, looking through her patient's head with low-powered Legilimency. "I'm looking for a base to start rebuilding from. Hogwarts would do but I can't find it at all, and that makes me fear the extent of her personality damage." She stood back, sighing heavily, placing her hands on her hips in frustration. "To be sure of a total recovery, I'd need not only a personality fragment, but a sample of her physical status before this partial plant transfiguration. Otherwise, the best I may be able to do may not be very much at all."
The Headmaster gave her a benign smile. "I believe, Poppy, that I have just the things you need up in my office. I'll be back in a moment."
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Paintings were able to move and talk because of special, magical paints that were used to create them, and those were prepared before the portrait was made, using a small fragment of a person's essence.
These were called Personality Fragments, and the way they were prepared was not dissimilar to taking up a collection of nail clippings of a person's soul, so to speak, and did no more permanent harm to a donor than taking a bit of hair to make a Polyjuice potion of them did.
Having been Head Girl in her day, Lily Evans had her portrait done on graduation day as a simple matter of course. These were routinely stored until that person did something noteworthy outside of school, whereupon that painting got hung on the school's walls to serve as an example and inspiration to younger generations.
However, so dear was his friendship to her that Dumbledore could not bear to activate her image and thus be continually reminded of her death. So it had stood, unactivated, in a closet, stacked with many other sleeping or inactive paintings, most of them old friends either of himself or the current staff.
He went and retrieved that painting now.
It would destroy the painting to do so, but the personality fragment imbued into the portrait could be restored to Lily Evans, returning her memories up to graduation day at least. As for the rest, with that sort of beginning it was more than likely that her mind would see to its own recovery with time.
One could not have done the same with an active painting and have anything like the same degree of success. So he was glad for the moment for his own weakness as a sentimental creature in not activating Lily's portrait.
That would return the majority of her memories to her, and the rest could be told to her, enabling her to resume her life with a bare minimum of confusion until such time as natural healing filled in the remainder.
As for the body, well, among the many mementos saved from the wreckage of their house at Godric's Hollow was a scrapbook with a lock of Lily's hair within it. It would be a fairly simple matter to take a bit of Polyjuice and give it to a person who could then stand by Lily's bed while Professor Sprout and Poppy restored her based on that model.
It could even be beneficial to ask Professor McGonagall to attend and perform a touch of human transfiguration, restoring Lily to her previous self, aided by the Polyjuiced example as a comparison.
While not quite a perfect solution, it came close enough and would serve as a cure for virtually all of the damage.
Most of Voldemort's victims had not been so fortunate.
It was marvelously elegant, and Albus Dumbledore felt massive relief over being able to come to the aid of a former student in so powerful a manner.
Why, she would be restored to near perfect health within days!
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Now there were a number of costumed villains in Gotham City, and very few of them were what anyone could call sane.
Pamela Isley, otherwise known as Poison Ivy, was not one of those that any rational creature could say was among the saner half. She had her lucid moments, that was true, some kind as well as some deadly moods, but she was, in her own special way, as off her rocker as the Joker.
That sort of thing left her vulnerable and would lead to interesting consequences for her. A sane person had, for the most part, a stable, cohesive mind, where a crazy one was more fluid.
Now a stable mind injected with the personality fragment of another stable mind would fight against it and ultimately reject it, defeating and expulsing that fragment, consigning it to destruction.
An unstable mind didn't work like that. It didn't have the necessary cohesion, and couldn't muster the strength to expel a stable personality fragment. It was like dropping oranges through an orange-sized opening. If it already had one filling the entrance any further oranges would just roll off and fall away. But if that gap was just filled with orange juice... well, it wouldn't be the newly arriving orange that was the one moving out of the way.
Pamela Isley stayed unaware and unconscious as the Hogwarts staff went to work on 'restoring' her, and thus didn't have a chance to resist as they put the personality fragment of a strong-willed witch into her brain.
However insane she may be, however, Poison Ivy had quite a strong will of her own. The resulting battle in her brain would not be pretty.
Because, while not exactly cohesive, the mind of Poison Ivy was that of a villainess, and they always fought dirty.
Coming back into her room half an hour later, Madam Pomphrey found that Lily was thrashing on her bed...
And that a ten foot tree and grown up out of Snape's cot, consuming his left leg in the process.
As she watched,, too stunned to move, the tree grew another thirty feet and poked a hole in the hospital ceiling.
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BEEP!
Harry went on working as the answering machine got the message. "Hi Pam! Harley. Listen, Catsy just got herself soaked during that freak storm last night. Plus, Freeze kinda knocked out all heat in that area with his latest 'hold the city for ransom' deal. So I'm worried she might catch a cold, poor dear. I'd drop in to look in on her but Puddin and I are going to the amusement park for some laughs. They just got a new ride and he wants to kill the attendant so we can get on as many times as we want! Then we are plannin to blow up the Tunnel of Love. Anyway, I was kinda hoping you could check in on Selina and make sure she's ok? Toodles!"
Thinking about what a kind person like Pamela would naturally do, Harry was already making his way across the greenhouse. Pushing the button to return the last incoming call, he smiled when Harley picked up and he asked her for Selina's address.
It turned out she lived in a penthouse just off the park.
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Author's Notes:
A special thanks to all of those lurkers who have broken their silence, and an extra-special thanks to have those who have stuck with me.
To my own surprise, this story is actually moving along fairly quickly. To be honest, this was NOT a fic that I was thinking I would devote much effort to. But hey, if people like it enough to tell me they want more of it who am I to argue?