Winter passed into spring. Severus had seen Harry several times, but very little had passed between them. Once it had been a chance encounter at the Three Broomsticks, and another time Harry and the children had been walking to the Owl Post Office while he was out front digging a garden plot. The little girl, Severus noted, looked more like her Grandmother and namesake than her mother, and she clutched his fence rail and watched him turn over the earth, fascinated by the wriggling earthworms. The first full moon in May, Severus was planting his moonflower seeds, at midnight, as he had learned from his mother, when he smelled acrid smoke and squinting into the night, traced it to the general vicinity of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes.
He apparated directly in front of the shop and realized immediately that the smoke was coming from behind him, not in front of him. He whirled around to face the small white cottage where Harry lived. He didn't see flames, but he heard them.
Other doors were opening now, other voices crying out, but he ignored them as he ran toward the front door. He reached it as it opened from inside and Harry, carrying Lily, stumbled outside, coughing. He didn't seem surprised to see Severus as he thrust Lily at him.
"Take her. I'm going back in."
Lily grabbed on to Severus as Harry stumbled away, sobbing and clutching at his robes.
"No, Harry, it's not safe!" Severus started to follow Harry, but Lily's coughing stopped him. "Harry!"
"Severus! Where's Harry!" George Weasley ran up to them, panting. Severus quickly passed the little girl to him and ran after Harry, back into the cottage. The smoke was dense but Severus saw movement and heard coughing, finally seeing Harry dragging two small shapes. He lunged at them, grabbing both boys and pushing Harry from behind to the doorway. He was already breathing in too much smoke, and Harry had doubled over in a fit of coughing. When they reached the porch, Harry gathered strength to grab one of the boys and they stumbled toward the stairs. He could hear the alarms from the magical services as they staggered into the yard. Hands grabbed the children and Severus bent over to catch his breath, gagging and panting. But Harry, inconceivably, impossibly, headed back to the front door.
"Harry! No!" His voice was a hoarse cry, hardly audible. Severus gathered his strength and ran back after the man. He caught up with him again and grabbed him around the waist. He'd managed to push him back down the stairs when a roaring noise filled the air and the large porch window exploded outward. The explosion slammed them down onto the ground as flames shot through the air above them. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't see. Harry was very still beneath him. Severus closed his eyes. He wanted to move, to pull himself and Harry further away from the inferno behind them, but the pain in his back when he so much as moved his shoulders was unbearable. He struggled to roll off Harry, but someone was shouting, and desperate hands grabbed him and pulled. A scream. Had it come from him?
"Across the street!" someone shouted. "Get them away from the house!"
"Stop struggling, I've got you," said a voice, a vaguely familiar voice. How the hell had Ron Weasley made it here so fast? Weasley half carried, half dragged him across the cobblestone street and Severus soon found himself being carefully laid on the ground on his side. He tried to roll over to his back but hands stopped and stilled him.
"No, Severus. You'll want to stay off your back."
"What's wrong with my back?" he rasped. He peered up at his rescuer's face, brightly lit from the glow across the street, and Weasley attempted a smile, distracted by another knot of people beside them.
More commotion.
"Is he breathing? Give them room. Clear out you imbeciles!"
"Harry?" he raised his head, blinking in the smoke-filled semi-darkness.
"He's right here…Poppy's working on him now," said Ron.
A child crying.
Coughing. A woman's voice, again familiar.
"One more, Mr. Potter. Try to swallow…"
He closed his eyes and waited. His back hurt. Whispers. The crack of apparition nearby. Ron Weasley talking to him in a low voice.
"They've got him sitting up now, Professor. He's got some burns on his arms and cuts on his legs from the glass…"
"Glass?" It hurt to speak. "What glass?"
But Weasley had backed off to make room for Poppy. She tried to smile at him but it came out all wrong.
"Harry's OK?" he whispered as she poured one of his own pain potions down his throat. "The children?"
"They'll all recover," she said quietly. "Mr. Potter asked about you too."
Severus closed his eyes.
The pain in his back, he'd discovered when he woke up in the infirmary in Hogwarts, was caused by the remnants of the window that had exploded outward as he was pushing Harry away from the porch. He'd absorbed the brunt of it, shielding Harry's body with his. It took Poppy most of the night to remove the glass and wood. She showed him the tray the next day and he had stared at it, mystified. Why did it feel like none of this was real? Harry running back into a house that was clearly already lost to fire, Ron Weasley carrying him to safety then comforting him, talking to him, while they waited for medical treatment, Hermione assisting as Poppy removed Harry's window from his back. He let Hermione give him a drink of water through a straw and another potion—he didn't even ask what it was, though he knew as soon as it hit his lips that he'd be falling into la la land again and soon—and closed his eyes.
When he awoke again, Minerva was sitting in a chair beside his bed.
"Feels like old times," he managed to whisper, his voice not much more than a croak. He didn't even attempt to smirk.
Minerva smiled. "The circumstances are, quite fortunately, different," she said. "Though it might feel like it, you did not suffer Cruciatus this time." She held a glass of water up to him and he gratefully drank through the straw.
"The children have been treated at St. Mungos and are with their grandparents. They'll have no lasting physical affects." She paused here a moment, looking briefly out the window. "They've moved Harry to St. Mungos," she said, watching his face carefully. "You're to go next."
His face showed his alarm.
"But Poppy…"
"Is not equipped to treat lung damage. Yours is not severe, but if you want to regain the lung capacity you had before the fire, you'll need the restorative treatment soon."
"How soon?"
"No more than an hour. Poppy will be here with the portkey," she answered.
"The fire?" he managed. "How…?"
"Accidental. A candle was left burning and it seems the cat…"
"The cat?"
Minerva shook her head. She then scooted her chair a bit closer to the bed.
"I've just been notified of a faculty vacancy next year…."