One Day at a Time
The Hospital Wing
I couldn't tell if I was awake or asleep, there were sounds in the background that I couldn't quite pinpoint, voices whose words I couldn't distinguish. I felt a hand on my chin, it seemed as though it was pulling my chin down slightly, something—a cup?--was being pressed against my lips, liquid was trickling into my mouth. The liquid started going down the wrong way, and I abruptly sat up, coughing. My eyes flew open and a second later the room came into focus. I was lying on a bed, and Madame Pomfrey was standing nearby, holding a cup with a purple liquid in it. A bit beyond Pomfrey stood Dumbledore, and a bit beyond that stood Snape.
"Do you remember what curse was used on you, Liseli?" Dumbledore asked with a concerned look on his face.
"I dun know. Theyn't say the incantation, but it looked like a fiery snake." To my great annoyance, my mouth was slightly slurring the words I said. I closed my eyes again, tired of looking between Pomfrey's and Dumbledore's concerned faces; I couldn't see Snape's face from where I was lying.
"Severus?" Dumbledore turned towards Snape.
For a second it looked like he was thinking. Then, he walked towards me and took a seat at the foot of the bed. I had no clue what he was doing, and he seemed to be ignoring that I was intently looking at him. He pointed his wand at my scorched lower legs and started muttering incantations that I couldn't quite catch. I felt a coolness spread throughout, and the throbbing pain was numbed slightly.
"She'll have to take a specific potion twice daily until the burn marks fade completely," he addressed Dumbledore, and I couldn't help but think You know, I am in the room.
"Could you tell us what happened, Liseli?" Dumbledore said gently.
"Well I was at my apartment, in London, when these two men entered my apartment—" I started.
"Did you recognize them?" Dumbledore asked softly.
I mentally cursed; I had been hoping to avoid saying that I knew them, but instead I nodded and said "They were Seginus and Matar. My two oldest brothers."
"Go on," he said gently.
"So I couldn't get my wand out subtly, since my hands were full—I was holding a cauldron—and when I made a move they used that spell," I indicated my legs.
"How long did they use it on you?" Snape said his first words to me.
"I don't know," I said, exasperated. I didn't particularly like having to tell the story of my brothers attacking me. "Fifteen, twenty minutes."
"Did Seginus and Matar say why they were there?" Dumbledore continued his gentle questions.
"Uh," I stalled to figure out what I was going to say. "They don't like it very much that I'm working at Hogwarts," I said meekly. "They're…Death Eaters…" I felt terribly ashamed and embarrassed at the last sentence, even though I was sure that Snape and Dumbledore already knew they were Death Eaters.
"Well, I assure you that you're safe while at Hogwarts. For now, I think we ought to let you get some rest." Here the Headmaster looked at Pomfrey, who nodded approvingly. "I'll stop by later," he added, and with that he walked out of the room. Madame Pomfrey left the other direction to grab me a change of robes, which left Snape standing alone in the room. It looked like he was hesitating, but then he abruptly turned to me and said in an angry tone "Liseli, why were you holding a cauldron?"
"I'm sorry?" The question was so out of the blue that I had no clue what he was referring to.
"You said you couldn't get your wand out because you were holding a cauldron. Why were you holding a cauldron?" he repeated his question.
"That's why I was at my apartment: to grab my cauldron," I explained. It seemed obvious to me, but I suppose I hadn't told them that.
"Did you not realize that I must have extra cauldrons?" he demanded.
I wasn't quite sure how to respond. He seemed rather annoyed, and I didn't know why. "It seems silly to borrow a cauldron when I have my own," I replied, my answer once again seeming extremely obvious to me. A question of my own had just leapt into my mind, and I decided that I was going to say it, even if he was still extremely annoyed. "Who found me?" I bravely asked.
"Dumbledore and I saw you collapsing against a wall," he informed me briefly, and made to stride out of the room.
I struggled to recall the last thing before I fainted, and vaguely remembered two men walking down the hallway, one of them running towards me. "But I remember someone sprinting towards me," I called after him, confused. Neither Snape nor Dumbledore seemed the sprinter type. Had I been hallucinating?
"Last I checked, 116 year old men do not run anywhere," he told me coldly as he left the Hospital Wing. I continued gazing at the empty doorway, puzzled. That seemed to imply he had been the one I saw running, but I could not imagine the Potions Master ever running. Briskly striding, quickly walking, yes, but running meant that you were in a great rush; somehow I could not imagine him ever caring enough about anything to be in a rush. Snape returned several hours later when I was just drifting off to sleep. I heard my name but, assuming it must've been the start of a dream, I ignored it until he barked "Liseli!" a dynamic louder.
"Huh? Wha?" I said oh-so-eloquently, my eyelids fluttering open.
"Drink this," he commanded, holding out a beaker filled with greenish-blue fluid.
"What is it?" I asked reflexively.
"It'll cause the after-effects of the curse to slowly disappear. It's the potion you're supposed to drink twice a day," he explained matter-of-factly.
"Oh. Thank you, Severus," I said rather quietly, but I got the impression he had heard me.
The next two days passed rather slowly. I had had a few visitors, namely Hagrid and Sprout, who both said that they had heard that I was attacked by Death Eaters. I was perfectly happy for that version of the story to be going around, because it meant I didn't have to mention that those Death Eaters were my brothers. Otherwise, the only people I saw were Pomfrey and Snape. I won't lie: I didn't quite the purpose of Madame Pomfrey. She brought me my meals, and would chat with me, but it was Snape who stopped by twice a day to cast the necessary spells and give me the necessary potions.
On my third day there, Pomfrey announced that I had a visitor and then let them into the room. I had been expecting someone like Flitwick or McGonagall, so when I saw who it was my face went from a cheery smile to narrowed, angry eyes.
"What are you doing here?" I glared at the skeletal frame. Tarazet seemed unfazed by my greeting and nonchalantly walked towards me. My mind was yelling, Don't bring up the last time we saw each other, fifteen years ago! Saying that out loud would have, of course, brought it up and had the opposite effect. Instead, I venomously said "I told you not to come to Hogwarts again."
"Technically you said not to come 'unexpectedly,'" he replied lightly.
"And what is this, then?" I asked bitterly.
He shrugged his bony shoulders. "I wouldn't call it unexpectedly. I owled Dumbledore and was escorted here by Pomfrey."
"You owled Dumbledore? You should tell Deneb; he'd be ecstatic. He kept saying I should talk to Dumbledore. For his own ultimate benefit, of course," I continued on in my bitter tone.
"Deneb does everything for his own ultimate benefit." His tone implied that he had long stopped caring about hat.
There was a pause and with a slightly less bitter tone I said, "So why are you here?" I didn't think that Tarazet's motives would be pure self-interest, as Deneb's always were.
"I hear my sister's in the hospital wing, bed-ridden, what am I supposed to do?" The skeleton walked closer and took a seat in the chair by the head of my bed.
I glared at him out of the corner of my eye and said, "Where'd you hear that?"
"A snidget told me," Tarazet replied seriously. He seemed to be in a much better mood than when I last saw him; he was starting to remind me of his pre-Azkaban days.
"Was this snidget attached at the hip to another snidget?" I eyed him warily.
He understood my reference to Seginus and Matar, who were so close they might as well have been attached at the hip. "No, it was a manipulative snidget who cares about getting on everyone's good side."
"Does this snidget have a snidget wife who's vapid and annoying?" I asked, referencing Marie-Ange to check that "manipulative snidget" was referring to Deneb.
"That's the one." Our conversation was so light, relatively, that it almost reminded me of the old days.
"How do you think manipulative snidget knew?" I asked disinterestedly; I already had my own theory.
"Something to do with attached-at-the-hips snidgets, I imagine," he was starting to sound angry. It wouldn't have surprised me in the least if Seginus and Matar had told Deneb; Deneb would not have done anything, short of informing Tarazet, because there would have been no net benefit for himself if he sided with me over my two oldest brothers.
The door to the room opened and we simultaneously looked to see who it was. Snape's eyes landed on Tarazet and a sneer started forming on the Potion Master's face. "Liseli, I brought your potion," he was now focusing all his attention on me, intentionally ignoring my brother.
"Thank you, Severus," I took the cup filled with aqua-green liquid and drank it. Snape continued standing there, though, and Tarazet looked as though he was starting to become annoyed.
"If you don't mind, I'd like to talk with my sister," Tarazet said icily.
"Go ahead," Snape replied smoothly, not budging a centimeter.
Tarazet's facial expression visibly became more aggravated and he angrily stated, "Let me rephrase that. May I please talk with my sister without a man whose name I don't even know standing ten centimeters away eavesdropping?"
"Severus Snape," he introduced himself. It almost looked as though Snape was enjoying taunting my youngest brother.
At this point Tarazet stood up from his chair, and I couldn't help but notice that he was more than a head taller than the greasy-haired man in front of him. "Snape, huh? I remember you. You were the boy that Regulus's brother was always hexing."
The mild amusement on Snape's face vanished instantly and was replaced by a look of deep loathing. "Let me guess," he sneered, "You're the boy that exploded Regulus Black's cauldron in potions class?" Tarazet's pale waxy face gained an ugly flush. "Now, judging from the last time I saw you, no, you may not talk to Liseli alone," Snape's hate-filled voice finished. He grabbed the book of my nightstand and sat in a chair on the other side of the room, presumably reading.
Tarazet slowly took his seat and glared angrily at Snape's profile. We all sat silently for a good few minutes; I think my brother was hoping that Snape would leave, but he seemed to be ignoring us. "Biscuit?" I said to Tarazet suddenly, wanting him to stop staring at Snape with daggers in his eyes.
"Huh?" He snapped his head in my direction, as though breaking out of a trance. Hagrid had brought me a plate of biscuits when he had visited and I held these out to him now. "They have chocolate, and Merlin knows you need that," I added, referencing his stay in Azkaban.
"I think I'd need more chocolate than that contained in a single biscuit," he said sarcastically, but he still took one from the plate.
I frowned slightly, as I often did when I was thinking. "When did you get out?"
"A couple of days before the last time I saw you," he coolly replied, and I felt my heart twinge as I realized I was probably one of the first, if not the first, person he had talked to after fifteen years of isolation. Tarazet either didn't see my emotion, or didn't respond, for he casually focused his attention on the biscuit and took a bite. Or to be more accurate, tried to take a bite of the biscuit. "What the hell?" he exclaimed as he looked at the biscuit which his teeth had not even managed to dent.
"My friend, Hagrid, is a great person, but not exactly the best cook," I explained.
"You're friends with Hagrid? That dimwit half-breed who lives by the Forbiddean Forest?" Tarazet sneered.
"Don't insult my friends," I snapped at him angrily, disappointed that he had reverted to his elitist pure-blood views so quickly.
"It's not an insult, it's a fact" he snapped back.
"You will not disrespect my friends. Period," I stated with a finality in my voice.
"You disappoint me," he said in a whisper so quiet that it barely reached my ear. "And you couldn't even defend yourself against Seginus and Matar," he added after a second, slightly louder. "I thought you were stronger than them."
I was giving Tarazet an ugly look. "I can to defend myself against them," I hatefully hissed at him.
"Clearly you can't!" he almost yelled. I saw that Snape was watching us out of the corner of his eye.
"Don't tell me what I can't do!" I yelled back, feeling my blood starting to boil.
"Fine. All I know is I'm cursing Seginus and Matar to hell when I see them, because clearly you're unable to," he spat.
The door to the hospital wing swung open again, only this time it was Dumbledore who strode in.
Tarazet leapt to his feet, his eyes nervously darting towards the Headmaster. "Good Morning, Liseli," the white-haired man greeted me. "Hello, Tarazet."
"Dumbledore," Tarazet stiffly nodded to acknowledge the Headmaster. His right hand was nervously holding his left forearm, where his Dark Mark was hidden underneath his long sleeves. "I was just about to leave, actually. It was nice seeing you, Liseli," he said stiffly, and without so much as glancing towards Snape he practically ran out of the door. Snape looked up, saw that Tarazet had left, saw Dumbledore, and also strode silently out of the room.
The Headmaster took the chair which Tarazet had previously been sitting in, and said in a conversational manner, "So how are you feeling, Liseli?"
"I'm feeling better than I was," I attempted to brush off my argument with my brother and smile cheerfully.
"That's good to hear the treatment is working," Dumbledore smiled.
I hesitated and then decided to ask my question. "Why has Snape been the one taking care of me? Why not Madame Pomfrey?"
"Severus is very talented when it comes to healing Dark Magic," Dumbledore explained.
"But why doesn't he give the potions to Pomfrey and have that be all? Why is he doing it himself?" This image of Snape-as-caretaker was clashing with my previous understanding of him.
"Severus can do the treatment the most effectively, I'm sure, and it gives him a chance to check on his patients." I gave Dumbledore a look that said "And why would he want to do that?" The Headmaster chuckled and continued, "As hard as it may be to believe, Severus does have a side which deeply cares about other people. It's a shame he tries so hard to keep anybody else from realizing that it exists." Dumbledore sighed.
We were both silent, and I supposed that he, like me, was deep in thought. I was mildly shocked, that such a side of Severus existed, partially because it actually did seem to fit, as though that had been the missing puzzle piece in how I perceived him. As if of its own volition, something that Hagrid had said in September leapt into my mind: "Snape's really not as bad as he seems, though. Even if he, well, seems to be." I was awed; it seemed as though what he said had been true.
…
A/N: A snidget is a small, magical bird. I figured wizards wouldn't say "A little birdie told me," so I changed it to "A snidget told me." Also, a big thank you to tibys, Berry64, Age-of-Orton and Mywaychan for reviewing!