MONDAY, 20 JULY
He really needed to stop doing this.
He'd managed to fall asleep again in the same ridiculous fashion as he had the night before. Snape would probably say he'd lost his mind completely. Or would, if he were saying anything at all. But the jarring awakening he got from repeatedly finding himself sitting in a chair after having spent the night with his head propped three inches from the man's face was going to take years off his life, and possibly more out of his back, young as it was.
Those black eyes still stared at him. He didn't blink quite enough, either, which seemed to transform it from merely awkward to outright unnerving.
Snape began to shift and move where he lay, and Harry froze. One unsteady long-fingered hand uncurled from beneath the cover and came up, pinching a lock of Harry's hair between thumb and forefinger. Harry was afraid for a brief moment that he'd begin to pull it, but he merely rubbed at it for a moment, his eyes narrowing as though he were studying something complicated.
Finally, Snape let go of his hair. Harry began to sit more upright, but was stopped again as Snape drew a fingertip down the side of his face, beginning just at his ear and tracing his jawline down to his chin. He let his hand fall heavily to the bed and made an odd, soft sound in the back of his throat, but, disappointingly, did not speak.
McGonagall had returned the evening before and had spent over an hour sitting in the same chair Harry currently occupied, just talking to Snape. Harry had kept his distance and had not been able to make out exactly what the woman had said to him, but he was fairly certain that Snape had never responded.
Could he still speak, at all? It was not at all surprising to think he'd damaged his voice under the Cruciatus curse, Harry knew full well what its effects were. But the healers here should have done something for him by now, surely?
Feeling restless by lunchtime, Harry wandered up to the visitors' teashop and grabbed a sandwich, taking it with him wrapped in paper rather than sitting at one of the small tables. He came back down the lift and wandered about, waving at a few other patients scattered about the ward.
He looked at the door to the residence wing and briefly considered dropping in to see if Lockhart's condition had changed at all in the last couple of years, but the thought depressed him. Even if Lockhart might have recognized the Harry Potter he'd known before, he surely would not now.
Neville's parents were still there also. Would he end up visiting his father like that, too? Dropping in every month or so and pocketing sweet wrappers from a man who did not really know who he was?
Snape's strange reaction that morning did not seem completely void of recognition, though. He'd been... sort of curious, or something, but not confused, Harry thought.
He caught sight of Watkins back at the main entrance to the spell damage ward. She was standing with another healer, the one named Smethwyck that McGonagall had seemed to dislike, discussing something. Smethwyck looked up and smiled wolfishly when he caught sight of Harry. Harry shivered slightly, not caring for the predatory expression. Watkins' smile was more genuine though, and she crooked a finger at him in summons.
"Harry, there you are! I had wanted to speak to you, actually. Smethwyck here thinks he might have a way to fix your father's nerve damage, along with the rest of his injuries, once and for all, but we'll need a bit of help from you."
"Oh, uh... yea, I'll do... whatever it is."
Smethwyck looked rather pleased, but Watkins's smile faltered slightly. She pulled at Harry's sleeve, moving them away from the door into an empty corner of the ward.
"Well, Harry, it's actually more than a bit of help, in fact it's rather complicated. Smethwyck can explain the process. It's actually quite a lot to ask of you, I think, so I don't want you to feel pressured into this. We can begin the nerve potion again once his other injuries are healed, of course, and that will certainly help him over time—"
Smethwyck cut in, earning him a look from Watkins, which he did not seem to notice at all.
"Yes, yes, that's one option, and a very inadequate one. If he were going to fully respond to that treatment, he would have recovered before the end of June. I've been doing some research in the intervening time, though, and found something else. It's a rather obscure bit of magic, and somewhat dangerous, but I think in a controlled setting, the risks should be minimal."
"Fine. What is it?"
"Hm, I'm trying think of a way to explain. It's a kind of... sympathetic magic. But it requires the participation of somebody with a closely similar magical signature, which usually means a close relative. We'll have to double check that you're a match before we begin, but I'm fairly confident, although.. as far as I know, you are the only living family he has?"
Harry thought for a minute. He realized he did not actually know in the slightest. Snape's parents had clearly vacated Spinner's End quite some time ago, but it struck him that he did not actually have any clue if they were alive or dead, or where they might be if they were still living. His father had been a Muggle and that was out of the question, anyhow. His mother? Who knew, except Snape himself, and he wasn't talking. Even Snape's memories had not shed any real light on his relationship with her, whatever it might have been. Harry knew literally nothing other than the fact that she was a pureblood witch, and that Snape's father had treated her abominably.
"Yes, as far as I know, I'm all he's got."
Watkins smiled and reached over to squeeze his hand.
"You're a good son, I'm sure."
Harry looked away from her, unable to respond. He'd come to accept that Snape was his father in the sense of being his sire, but wasn't anyone's son at all, not in any way that mattered . He'd not had a real father since the age of one, other than perhaps Mr Weasley. But if a blood kinship and magical similarity were all that was needed for this cure, he could hardly begrudge the man a bit of aid, after everything.
"Well, then what is this... cure?"
Smethwyck stepped closer to him slightly, as though trying to edge Watkins out of the way.
"In the simplest terms, the process is akin to siphoning off a bit of the donor's magic and more or less grafting it into another's, which can heal and strengthen the recipient's. I was successful in removing the cursed venom from your father back in May, but there was significant harm done to both his physical body and to his magic. Normally injuries like the physical damage to his nerves would heal on their own in a wizard, you know, unlike a Muggle. A witch or wizard's internal magical core is quite a powerful healer on its own. Much of what we do here is merely directing that force and focusing it.
"But for this to work, there must be a certain amount of similarity between the two magical signatures, or the recipient's magic may reject the other's entirely. Sort of like Muggles do with their donor blood transfusions, although the analogy is somewhat inadequate."
Harry considered the concept. It seemed uncomfortably intimate, but sounded straightforward enough, at least on the surface.
"Is that all? Doesn't seem all that dramatic, though?"
Smethwyck fiddled with his clothing for a moment.
"Well, the risks to donor are more than what there would be simply removing a pint of blood, I'm afraid. There can be a sort of... reaction... if the transfer is not done properly or the similarity isn't great enough. It's also possible to take too much, in the end, if the attenuation isn't kept even by the casters. This hasn't been done at St. Mungos in about 150 years for a reason. I'm absolutely certain we can perform the spell without undue risk, but I will not say that it is without risk entirely.
"Furthermore, you will need time to recover once it is done. You'll be confined to bed rest for a fortnight, at the least, as your magic replenishes itself, and we'll have to keep you here under observation for at least a week at first. There should be no lasting side effects in the long-term, although your magical signature may be... er, very slightly changed. This isn't harmful, per se, but it might confuse any existing magical contracts or spells that are keyed specifically to you."
Harry was beginning to understand McGonagall's annoyance with this man. He was astoundingly obtuse for someone who was clearly very intelligent.
"What do you mean by 'slightly changed' exactly?"
Smethwyck paused for a moment, considering something. The door to the ward opened and someone stepped inside, but Harry didn't bother to look at the visitor.
"Well, the transfer involves a rather close intermingling of the two magical signatures. It requires that they are similar to one another to begin with, but in the end, apparently, they tend to resemble one another even more strongly than when they began. If you do not renew individual wards, for example, it's likely that you both will be able to access them equally, where they would have excluded one or the other of you before. I've even read of participants being able to use one another's wands like they were their own, afterward. It's a rather curious phenomenon, actually, quite fascinating..."
"What on Earth are you talking about now, Smethwyk?"
Harry nearly jumped at the sound of Professor McGonagall's sharp voice behind him.
Harry sat in the visitors' tearoom with his hands wrapped around a hot mug. McGonagall sat across from him, worry evident in the crease between her brows as she regarded him.
"Harry, I understand your desire to help Severus, it is perfectly natural, of course, to want to aid someone in dire need, but this is quite dangerous magic that Smethwyck is suggesting. I do not claim expertise, but I somewhat recall reading about something of the sort many years ago. There is good reason such spells are not often used."
"I know, he said they could, er, take too much by accident, or something."
"Indeed! They could leave you no better than a squib! Or even possibly kill you, Harry."
Harry's knuckles turned white where he gripped the mug. He could see the man laying in the ward a floor below, in his mind's eye. He had walked out of Hogwarts after resigning at the end of June, apparently thinking himself too useless and unwanted to remain. What had he been doing since then? There was no evidence of anything in Spinner's End, although Harry had to admit the place had been turned upside down by the witch who attacked him, so who really knew.
Harry stared down into the hot chocolate that McGonagall had put in front of him earlier, as though the answers to his life might be hidden in its depths.
Did he really want to do this? What was Snape to him, really? A father? In blood, perhaps, but he knew that only mattered so much in the end. He'd built a family for himself elsewhere, among his friends at Hogwarts, among the encompassing love of the Weasleys. Even the woman sitting across from him, in a way. Was family just a matter of blood, then, or was it something else entirely?
James Potter had loved him, dearly. He could not deny that, whatever the circumstance of his birth had been. The man had died trying to protect him and his mother, laying his life down in front of Voldemort to buy the two of them the barest chance of escape. It had not saved Lily in the end, but that did not diminish the act.
Who is Severus Snape, then? An antagonist, for much of his life. He had dodged and ducked the man for six years at Hogwarts, and when he'd failed he'd spent many an evening scrubbing out cauldrons or writing snidely-worded lines while trying not to roll his eyes at the endless sarcasm and constant stream of childish insults.
What else, then? A counter-curse to keep him on a bucking broom. He'd misdirected Umbridge in her office and then rushed off to Grimmauld Place to check on a man he had loathed, all because Harry had been convinced Sirius was in mortal danger. A pity Harry had not trusted him back then, things might have ended very differently. And then, Snape had let everyone believe him a callous murderer for a year to complete a task laid before him by the very man who had commanded Snape to end his life, over much protest.
As a young man, he had dived into the dark arts and become a Death Eater, foolishly believing it would make him powerful, that he would not be that vulnerable child any longer, that it would protect him from pain. He had given Voldemort a piece of a prophecy, not knowing that it would get his lost friend killed. He spent the rest of his life paying for his mistake. And, in the end, he had given Harry what he'd needed to walk to his own death. Snape's life had been dedicated to keeping Lily's son alive for sixteen years, and he'd let it go in the end, somehow.
Who is Severus Snape? Harry realized he really had absolutely no idea, despite everything. None of the pieces fit together. It was like peering at a scene through a shattered window. Despite the risks, was he worth saving?
In the end, did any of it even matter? Snape was suffering and Harry was in a position to provide aid. Harry Potter could no more turn his back and walk away from someone who needed his help than he could reach into his chest and pluck his own heart out.
Harry gulped down the chocolate, no longer hot but tepid and almost sickeningly sweet.
TUESDAY, 21 JULY
"Harry, this really does sound super dangerous, are you absolutely sure you want to go through with it?"
Harry sat at the kitchen table in the Burrow, having finally caved into both Professor McGonagall's and Watkins's repeated insistence that he should take a day or two to rest and think over his decision with a clearer head, although Smethwyck had been impatient to get on with it. Watkins had snatched the parchment with the consent statement out of the other healer's hand when he'd tried to get Harry to sign it immediately and Harry was definitely starting to understand why McGonagall had so little patience for him.
He had to admit, he did feel more like an actual human being after a couple hot meals of Mrs Weasley's excellent cooking and a night in a real bed.
"Ron, you know I have to at least try."
"Listen mate, I know he's technically your father, but this is still Snape we're talking about here, never mind your need to save everybody and their mother. I know what you told me earlier about all the stuff he did, and who knows, maybe he might be some kind of backwards hero, but he's still a git and you could die! I mean, he'll probably get better anyway, eventually, at least a bit?"
"Ron, I just... "
Harry sighed and tilted his head back, closing his eyes. He really didn't want to sit here and argue with Ron over this. He wished Hermione were back from Australia already, as she was usually the one to put the brakes on this sort of thing before it really blew up.
As it was, it fell to Ginny to kick her brother under the table as he opened his mouth again to say something else.
"Ron, I swear sometimes you just don't know when to shut up. You already know he's going to do it and you already know why. I mean what if it was one of us at St Mungo's right now? D'you think he wouldn't be doing the exact same thing?"
"Yea, but it's not one of us, and anyway, we're his friends, Ginny. And he couldn't do it for one of us anyway, because he's not actually related to any of us, so it's not the same at all. Besides, I'd never ask him to do something like that! It could kill him, Ginny!"
"That's not the point, Ron and you know it. I mean, when the hell have you ever seen Harry just ignore anybody who needed help? He'd spend the rest of his life just beating himself up over it! Is that what you want?"
Harry knew he was starting to blush as heat flushed over his face, all the way up to his ears. Leave it to Ginny to be so on the nose about it. Hermione had accused him more than once of having a "saving-people thing" and he'd long since stopped trying to deny it, but having it pointed out always made him feel weirdly exposed. Harry fidgeted, pushing loose hair behind his ear and trying not to look at either of them.
Mrs Weasley chose that moment to make an appearance and sat down beside Harry, pulling him into half a hug for a moment and thankfully ending the argument.
"Whatever you decide, Harry, you know we will support you."
"I know you will, and... thanks, uh..."
Mrs Weasley leaned over, pressing a soft kiss to the side of his forehead.
"You've always been a brave one, Harry, I know things will work out."