Harry hated this place. Despite a few curtains, there was no real privacy, for one. He had passed the residential ward on the way in, for another, and couldn't help but think about the Longbottoms. Would Snape be in the same state, when all was said and done?

The healer, whose name turned out to be Marissa Watkins, seemed to think his prognosis would not be so grim, although she did not go so far as to promise a full recovery, as she had never dealt with the after-effects of the venom of a snake like Nagini before.

Smethwyck dropped in and introduced himself to Harry, shaking his hand and spending several awkward moments congratulating him on his defeat of Voldemort.

"I suppose you're staying with him for a while, then? I do remember reading in the Prophet, although they've been known to get things wrong, er, you are his son, right?"

Harry nodded, feeling less conflicted about that fact that he ever had before, somehow. He still had the man's wand in his pocket and took a moment to feel for it, confirming that it had not been lost.

A crowd of red hair appeared at the entrance to the ward as the Weasleys finally arrived. They must have stopped back by the Burrow, as Ginny was with them this time. They caught sight of Harry where he stood with Smethwyck and filed over, with Minerva McGonagall bringing up the rear.

"Well, we meet again, I suppose."

McGonagall took Smethwyck's offered hand and shook it somewhat perfunctorily, a hard expression on her face. Harry got the feeling that she did not like the man.

"Looking to get another paper out of the man, is it?"

Smethwyck blushed slightly and stepped back.

"Ah, no... Watkins called me up for a consultation. Worried about the interaction of the curses with the existing damage, you see."

"Hm. Well, get to it, then."

McGonagall stepped back and pulled a chair over from next to an empty bed, seating herself and crossing a leg over the other, as though she were planning on remaining for a time.

"Will you be okay here, Harry?

"Yea, I'm fine, Mrs Weasley."

Ginny glanced back at him.

"I can stay tonight too, if you want?"

Harry smiled at her, appreciating the offer for what it was. Snape was hardly Ginny's favorite person, to say the least. Or anyone's, really. She was willing to stay for Harry.

"No, I'll be fine, it's okay. You go with your family."

George slapped him on the back.

"Harry, haven't you figured it out yet, you are family."

Harry looked down at Snape's prone, sleeping form and smiled ruefully.

"You sure you guys really want to claim me? You might get more than you bargained for..."

Ron looked down at Snape, shaking his head dramatically and gave a long-suffering sigh.

"Oh, we'll survive, somehow."

Mr Weasley had been in quiet conversation with McGonagall, but finally came over to join the rest, stopping to speak to Harry for a moment.

"Harry, I know you and Severus both have had a tough couple of days, but do take care of yourself too, alright? Firecall us if you need anything."

"Yes, Mr Weasley."

Mr Weasley gave one last, loaded glance back at McGonagall, who merely inclined her head in some sort of acknowledgment. With that, the Weasley clan filed out of the spell damage ward to return to the Burrow.

Harry dragged the chair that Mrs Weasley had vacated over to Snape's bed and flopped down heavily. He felt like he'd been dragged by a hippogriff himself, and a night spent sleeping on a kitchen floor had hardly been restful. He leaned his elbows on the edge of the bed and propped his head on his hands to rest his eyes for a moment.

SUNDAY, 19 JULY

Harry awoke suddenly to the feeling that he was being watched. How much time had passed, he did not know. There was a blanket draped over his shoulders and he was hunched over stiffly with his head buried in his arms and propped on something soft. The sound of someone breathing was mere inches away from his ear.

This was the second time he'd awoken in recent memory not knowing quite where he was, but his memory engaged a few moments later. He sat up stiffly, his battered body protesting at another night spent sleeping in a completely unnatural position.

He opened his bleary eyes and nearly fell out of his seat. Snape was not only awake, but staring at him in a rather unnerving fashion. It was not his usual glare, but something more raw.

Harry sat back in his seat, trying not to meet that strange gaze. He rolled and stretched his stiff neck, cringing at the loud cracking it produced. He pulled his blanket more tightly about himself, as though it could shield him.

McGonagall came up to stand beside him, a hand alighting softly on his shoulder. She looked down at Snape, not unkindly but with an unmistakable measure of annoyance.

"Well, Severus, I had hoped not to repeat this sort of situation quite so soon, but here we are again. Can you speak at all?"

Snape made no indication, positive or negative. He stared alternately at Harry and at McGonagall, his odd gaze slowly moving back and forth between the two of them, but he did not respond at all.

Harry flinched slightly in surprise as McGonagall took her hand off of his shoulder and brushed it over his hair, tucking a long dark strand behind his ear and carding through the length of it once or twice almost affectionately. He'd never known the woman to be so... demonstrative. He couldn't quite stop himself from blushing slightly, feeling the heat of it rising in his cheeks.

"Harry dropped by Cokeworth the day before yesterday to attempt talk to you, again, despite your wretched behavior earlier. I imagine he was not expecting to have to save your life. He's not left your side once, since. You could at least say something to him, you know."

There was a slight twitch under Snape's left eye. McGonagall merely sighed and left to return to her seat a few feet away. Harry let his eye follow her, unwilling to endure Snape's staring again quite yet.

Harry shifted in his seat, uncomfortable in more ways than one. If he'd felt poorly the day before, his body now positively screamed its displeasure at him. He turned sideways, pushing against the backrest and slowly levering himself upright, refusing to look again at the man laid out on the bed.

He managed to get to his feet without embarrassing himself too badly, or at least he managed not to wince or cry out. He looked around the ward blearily. It was definitely early morning, which meant he had, indeed, spent the entire night hunched over next to Snape's pillow. It was a disconcerting thought.

He looked back at McGonagall, who sat thumbing a copy of the Daily Prophet. Blessedly, the headline had nothing to do with either him or Snape today, instead focusing on some sort of controversy over a new Wizengamot appointee whose name Harry had never heard before.

Thank Merlin for slow news days , he thought. He didn't think he could take another uproar over a nearly immortal dark wizard quite yet. Maybe in a few years, after he'd completed his Auror training...

He shuffled his way over to the lifts, making his way to the visitors' tearoom on the floor above, detouring to the mens' toilets first.

He washed his face in the sink as best he could without proper soap and resorted to a freshening charm on his clothing with a sense of déjà vu . The weight of the extra wand in his sleeve pocket shifted against him, as though it were a living thing, and sought to remind him of its presence, impatient to be returned to its master.

"I'll give you back as soon as he's up and mobile, I promise. It's not like he can do anything right now... and why am I talking to ruddy wand?"

Harry rubbed at his tired eyes. He still hadn't gotten around to getting a new pair of glasses. Maybe there was a way to adjust them with a charm or something. Hermione would probably know. She was due to return from Australia with her parents soon. Maybe she and Ron would want to go out and do something with him on his birthday. And Ginny... Well, he could do with a drink (but not firewhisky) and a relaxing evening with people who did not attempt to burn a hole through his head with their eyes.

He used the toilet and washed his hands before pausing in front of the small mirror above the sink again. The long hair definitely made him look more like Snape, eyes and glasses excepted, and a couple days unwashed really drove the point home. He scratched at his scalp, the tacky, greasy feel of it irritating him intensely. How did the man just ignore it for days on end?

The thought of getting a haircut still made his skin crawl, but he wished he had something to tie it back with, at least. No wonder the man was staring at him like he'd grown three extra heads. It was probably like looking into some kind of funhouse mirror.

He stopped by the visitors' tearoom and downed a few cups of weak tea and bolted a tasteless breakfast before taking the lift back down to the spell damage ward. He ran into Watkins as he walked through the doors and began to stiffly make his way back over to Snape.

The healer stopped and smiled at him crookedly. "You know I've been waiting nearly two days now for you to admit you're not in top shape yourself. Are you sure you don't want something done about all that bruising?"

Harry blinked at the healer. He'd been too distracted by the far more dire situation his father was in to give a great deal of thought to his own aches, but he really did feel quite miserable.

"Er, uh. Well, I wouldn't object to it, if you're offering."

Watkins laughed and herded him across the room. He started to head back toward the seat he'd occupied earlier, but Watkins grabbed him by the arm (he managed not to wince too badly) and pulled him toward next bed over, which was currently unoccupied. Snape's head turned to stare at him across the gap, again. He was half tempted to grab the curtain in irritation and pull it across, but Watkins pushed him to sit on the bed before he could give in.

"Lose the shirt, if you don't mind."

Harry gulped at her, hesitating. He wasn't ashamed of his body, exactly, haven gotten over that notion in the Quidditch locker room years ago, but the weight of that stare across the way rendered him uncharacteristically shy. He glanced over at McGonagall as well, who merely gave him a bland look and went back to her newspaper, a quill in hand as she worked at the daily crossword. Watkins tapped an impatient foot, waving a jar of salve that she'd pulled out of a pocket.

Finally, Harry relented and began undoing buttons. He failed to stop the wincing as he pulled the shirt off. Watkins cocked an eyebrow at him and let out a low whistle as she walked a half-circle around him, then leaned slightly to get a look at his back.

"Hm, more than I'd expected by a long shot. How the hell have you been walking around like that for two days? I'd be complaining every other step."

Harry shrugged at her, trying not think at all about the last two days.

"It's not as bad as it looks, probably. I've been hurt worse than this before and lived, anyway."

He decided not to mention that he'd had his own experiences with the Cruciatus curse in the past, among other things. His file in the hospital wing at Hogwarts had to be the thickest of his year, if Pomfrey had held onto it.

Watkins paused for a moment, then twisted the top of the jar open and began to deftly apply the salve over his bruises. It hurt less than he'd expected it to, as her fingers did not linger over any one spot for too long, or press too hard, at least, although she put a second, thicker layer over the darkest bruising on his ribs and at his wrist and elbow where he'd hit the floor the hardest when that witch had tackled him.

After about twenty minutes, she'd manged to cover the more colorful regions of his skin. She stood back and looked over him like a craftsman appraising a project. She then rubbed a bit more over the bite on his ear and the scratches around his face. Harry reached over for his shirt, glad to cover himself from the silent gaze a few feet away that never left him.

McGonagall left shortly before lunchtime, with a promise to return in the evening. Harry didn't know why he couldn't bring himself to leave as well. It's not as though he was wanted here. Snape slept occasionally, and stared at him with that same unreadable expression when he was awake. Harry was starting to feel like that boa constrictor in the zoo that he'd accidentally set on his cousin that time, and was getting the same impulse to make a break for it.

Something held him back.

Giving in to his exhaustion after a while, he stretched out on the neighboring unoccupied bed and managed to nap for a few hours.

When he awoke it was mid-afternoon already, the light from the windows stretching long and thin across the ward. Watkins was bent over Snape, blessedly blocking the man's bizarre stare for once. Harry stretched, popping more joints but not so painfully this time. A bit of proper sleep on an actual mattress (even a sub-par one) had done him some good, apparently, although he still felt tired.

Harry slid off the bed and stood until the room stopped spinning. Oh, yea. He'd skipped lunch as well. Watkins turned from her patient to speak to Harry.

"Still a bit out of sorts, then?"

"Er, not really. Just stood too quickly. I think I slept through lunch..."

The healer turned back to Snape for a brief moment.

"Well, you can go upstairs and get something if you like, your father is fine for the moment where he is."

He nodded and began to walk, but the healer stopped him as he passed her.

"Or you could go home for a while and eat something nice and get some real rest, you know. Things have settled down since we got most of the casualties from Hogwarts sorted out, so I don't think anyone will mind you borrowing an empty bed, but you'd feel a lot better after a night at home, I think."

Harry was about to argue with her that he didn't really have a home of his own, anyway, and that the Weasleys probably deserved a few days' break from his squatting habits, but it felt disloyal to them to give voice to that thought to a near-stranger. They'd insisted again and again that he was welcome to stay on until he'd figured out something permanent.

That didn't mean he was quite ready to up and leave Snape to himself, though. He still wasn't quite sure what compelled him to stay. A strange fear, perhaps, that the man would find some way to leave on his own, before he was ready and... Harry had the nasty suspicion that he'd maybe not really tried all too hard to stop that witch from doing what she had done.

"I'll, uh, just go upstairs and get something."