Harry sends off an owl to Remus and the younger Sirius about James but not about Snape yet. He just…doesn't know what to do right now.
Harry knows that if he's not there, Sirius might actually kill Snape - and while it didn't happen in this timeline because older Sirius interfered, Harry thinks Sirius might use Moony to do it.
Harry thinks Remus might agree.
So Harry will just…keep it quiet on his end until he's sure James is fixed, then when they get back to Hogwarts, Harry will tell them and try to mitigate the damage to at least legal means.
Hopefully after seeing James completely fine, Remus and Sirius will calm down because that's also the only reason Harry hasn't lost his shit. In fact, James has been having fun with it.
James is being smothered in affection, lots of hugs and getting handfed sweets (even though being vision-impaired certainly hasn't stopped him from running around his room touching everything in curiosity since he can't remember the last time he was in hospital). The nurses got him an icy pole to eat, and he lured bigger Sirius into his bed for cuddles, and he acts cute with his parents just to hear them laugh.
Harry gets back to James' room after sending the owl and finds everyone standing awkwardly because Voldemort is already here. Tom is speaking politely to a visibly distressed Fleamont. Whether Fleamont is distressed by older Sirius or by Voldemort is anyone's guess.
James is sitting up against the headboard with his hospital gown pulled up properly now that his torso has been healed enough, staring out blindly into the room and chattering on as he happily introduces Voldemort to Sirius.
"My name is technically Aldura Canis now," Sirius offers.
"Wow, you went hard on the stars, huh?" James laughs. "Wait, is it…the dog's tail?" He cracks up.
"You literally named Remus Moony, don't give me that shit," Sirius complains. He raises an eyebrow at Voldemort. "Anyway, hi I guess. Not sure how I feel about a Dark Lord hanging around my Potters."
"I'm rather on the fence about a hitwizard of your reputation being so close to the children I'm mentoring," Voldemort replies mockingly.
James pauses. "Siri, what's your job?"
Sirius sucks in a breath. "So I heard you were called in to fix Jamie's eyes," he says to Voldemort, completely ignoring James. "Do you have experience with making counter curses or are you just going to fuck around until something works?"
"Oh, I'm excellent with curses," Voldemort reassures him but it's definitely a threat. "A counter should be easy enough."
The medi-witch in charge of James politely knocks and enters, hesitant because of the Dark Lord but at her back is a mass of other healers who all have paper and a quill to take notes because counter curses are a specialised field but are needed for all professions. Having at least some knowledge can make or break a hospital case like this.
Harry shares a confused glance with Euphemia.
"Stand over there," Voldemort orders, gesturing to the other side of James' bed. "Hold the questions until the end, it's a delicate process."
Oh, Voldemort is using this for publicity. Well, never let it be said the Dark Lord doesn't know how to get the best out of any situation.
The issue with Voldemort right now is that everyone knows he's a Dark Lord and has a militia at his beck and call, but there's no evidence against him. All the deaths, the bribing and threats – it's circumstantial. So everyone is very aware but they can't do anything, and also no one is willing to trigger this into an all-out war.
They're just pretend it's fine, and it's somehow working out okay.
Harry moves around and takes a seat next to James on the bed, on the side of the cluster of healers. Voldemort ushers Sirius out of the way and sits on the other side. Tom breaks away from a concerned Fleamont as he comes to stand over Voldemort's shoulder so he can watch closely.
"Tell me if it hurts," Sirius says to James, leaning back against the wall behind Voldemort but keeping his arms loose in case he needs to grab for his wand.
"Is it going to hurt?" James asks as Voldemort grabs his chin to hold him still. "Actually, don't tell me, I really don't want to know. Let's make it a fun surprise when I start screaming."
James stares out as Voldemort casts bright spells and writes simple diagnostic runes into the air just in front of his eyes. Harry can't help tensing a bit because Voldemort's wand is really very close and it's just all random spells Harry doesn't know, they could be doing anything right now.
"Is it happening?" James asks hesitantly.
"Well he's doing something," Sirius mutters.
"That's a little too close, isn't it?" Harry asks worriedly.
"Do you want me to do this or not?" Voldemort snaps. "I'm trying to work here."
Euphemia sends Harry and Sirius a look each that tells them to behave when a Dark Lord is holding a wand up to James' eyeballs.
A couple minutes go by and James sinks into Voldemort's hand, neck between the thumb and forefinger with chin on Voldemort's palm. The Dark Lord's hand has warmed up with James' body heat so it's now quite comfortable. James looks around, bored. He can feel a sort of air pressure, in the way that most diagnostic spells feel like.
"Why are you constructing a counter curse instead of unweaving the spell already on him?" Tom asks.
"It's reflecting light before James can see it, so it's more of a barrier spell than a curse," Voldemort lectures. "Barriers are self-contained and harder to pull apart, so a counter is more efficient. Look here, can you see the edges?"
Green light scatters over James' face, rolling over his features like particles of sand before fading. Everyone leans in and finds that a thin, very faint ring of neon green sticks to the area around James' eyes instead of moving before that too fades.
"Crisp lines means it's harder to find a weak point as everything is tucked in," Voldemort explains. "If it was hazy, I would focus more on the edges and expand the arithmancy to then cancel it out."
To prove his point, he raises James' head to straighten out the boy and casts the same green spell over James' torso. The neon green sticks but the lines are more jagged and blurred, the residue from the cutting curse. Voldemort then flicks his wand and the green turns to a deep blue before gold pours out in a chain of three-dimensional shapes.
"This is the containment for the spell. Sixteen fours as a base, a three to encapsulate it and a simplified eight for anchoring," Voldemort lists. "So you cancel it out with sixteen sixes, a seven and a complicated two - because you need to make a neutral ten. The spell then has no containment and it degrades into neutral environmental magic."
Voldemort writes the new shapes into James' chest and the lights vanish. The healers gasp and someone quietly applauds in the background.
"You would have been a good defence professor," Harry muses.
Voldemort's eyes flicker to Harry. Harry clears his throat and looks away because he didn't mean to say that aloud.
"Do you want to see the spells we made?" James asks excitedly now that Harry seems interested. "We remade the pimple hex but bonded a layered containment to a secondary jinx. When you use the normal counter curse, the containment breaks but triggers the jinx and the pimples get bigger. And they keep getting bigger the more you use the counter because we layered the containment!"
"That would be good for a wasting curse," Voldemort allows.
The room's tension builds again immediately because wow, okay, going straight into Dark magic and how to torture someone as they die slowly, great.
It takes a while longer to fix James' eyes, because Voldemort is constructing a spell in real time. The healers creep ever closer and an intern eagerly takes up position beside Voldemort and writes down the arithmancy he dictates to her.
Voldemort finishes the spell in twenty minutes and James startles violently when he sees a wand that close to his eyes but Voldemort clamps down on his jaw to keep him in place. Voldemort casts another spell to check and frowns. "There might have been a secondary."
Sirius slips around to pick up James' glasses off the side table and put them on the boy. "Try again."
"Ah," Voldemort realises, and the spell comes back better this time.
"My eyes aren't that bad," James grumbles. "Oh, hi! Wow, there's a lot more people in here than I thought there would be."
"Do I need to take care of things?" Tom complains to James privately as they're leaving. "That is embarrassing, James, that you would lose to the common rabble when you are representing the Dark Lord."
"I'm sure I put up a fight," James protests.
"You didn't even have your wand on you."
James rolls his eyes. "I'll take care of it. You're just salty because you lost to me in a fight, which means you also technically lost to whoever did this to me."
"I did not lose that fight and you damn well know it," Tom hisses.
"Fine, let's have a rematch and decide who the winner is once and for all!" James declares.
Harry needs to come and separate them.