NOTE

Warning: this chapter overall is quite intense. A lot of physical pain and anxiety.

20. Night

My body was slick with sweat, and the sheets of the bed were tangled around my legs. I couldn't stop the feverish shivering that controlled my body, making me shake like a marionette. The air and the moonlight were freezing to my skin, but everything from my heartbeat to my eyesight pulsed with a searing hot pain.

The aching was tremendous, but not so much as to render me insensate. I could feel every layer of the pain, down to the tears that suddenly welled up and began to stream down my face. I saw in the cold light of the moon that I had bruises on my arms, and the pain was most intense between my legs.

It felt like I was in a cramped, black, sweltering place under the earth. In the stomach of a boiling volcano, with no hope of eruption. Doomed.

No clear thoughts formed in my head–I could barely breathe. But I knew instinctively that I had to get to help.

It took everything I had to make myself move. The pain stormed and burned, and I thought I would be sick. I felt like screaming as I slowly managed to sit up, but I could make no sound for how much it hurt.

My whole body remembered the pain of the Cruciatus Curse in the Forbidden Forest on the night of the battle, and the humiliation that had followed. While the pain of the curse had been stabbing and electric, this was pulsing and deep–but equally inescapable, and even more painful because it called back that night.

I remembered what I had read in the terrible books–the story of the werewolf and his wife. And she died of her pleasure. Though I still didn't understand them, I now knew that I should have put more faith in the words. More than that, I should have listened to Remus.

As I gathered my willpower, I felt paralysed by a single thought.

Will I die tonight?

I sobbed, full of fear as I made my first feeble steps across the room, barefoot, wearing only my damp dressing gown.

It took what felt like an age just to cross the classroom floor. Everything felt further away than it was supposed to be, shrunken in the powerful moonlight and incapable of helping me. I imagined Remus curled up in the corner of the Shrieking Shack, sleeping through the night. I longed to speak to him somehow. I'm sorry, I would say. I shouldn't have fought you. I… I love you, too.

It took everything for me to pull the door open. I thought for a moment that my whole body would heave up out of my skin as I pulled. The heavy wood creaked, and even the sound of it made my ears scream.

I made it somehow through the door and collapsed on the stone stairs–so cold that they burned. I was hopeless and shaking with sobs that only made my pain ring louder. My heart was groaning, praying for someone to stumble upon me, to save me. But I continued to sob and shake, all alone.

I thought of Fred, of all the Weasleys, of my friends. Of how they had accepted me and loved me, when I'd grown up believing I would never be truly safe and stable and warm.

I hunched over, full of grief, and suddenly my cough came back. It was excruciating, all of my core muscles clenching. Black spots bloomed in my vision, but I forced myself to keep breathing steadily. I couldn't pass out. I couldn't give into the intoxicating comfort of those good memories.

My logical mind cut through the fog for a precious few seconds. I knew, deep in my aching bones, that I would not be able to make it all the way to the hospital wing. It was simply too far, and I would have to climb up too many stairs. My next best option was to make it to Severus. He would be able to help me, or at least to help me to Poppy. There were plenty of stairs between me and his office, but I had much more faith in my ability to walk down than up.

Straining with all I had, I pulled myself up by clawing at the stone wall, the stone bannister. And I kept walking. I longed to encounter some portraits along the way, to get them to send a message. But there weren't any along my path through the castle.

The dungeons were cold and damp. The temperature was so at odds with the burning in my body, and made me shiver so violently that I could only barely walk. I had to pause after every step to lean against the wall, certain I would vomit. The journey had been so exhausting that it should have numbed me, but the pain was cruel and insisted on being felt, continuing to throb outward from my belly, to set my breath on fire.

Severus's office was at the end of the corridor. I saw light flickering under the heavy dark door, and for the first time knew there was hope. I dragged myself to the door and knocked on it, my knuckles burning.

"Severus?" I managed, my voice coming out of me full of agony, yet with surprising strength, desperation to survive. "Severus, please…"

The effort of speaking made me see black specks again, and I started to sink down the wall beside the door when suddenly I heard footsteps–each one causing a piercing pain in my ears–and the door swung open, inward.

Severus stood before me in a dark blue dressing gown, the light of a fire glowing over his shoulder. All at once, his stern and startled face was the most welcome one I had ever seen. I gasped in relief, and began to cough uncontrollably.

"What has happened?" he said, his voice deep and urgent.

I cringed at the sensation of his voice rolling through me, and shook my head, unable to articulate myself. The cough had made all of my muscles seize, and I could barely breathe, let alone speak.

Severus was impatient, and in the next moment I felt him in my mind, his presence searching this way and that. It only took him a few seconds, but the invasion shattered the last of my strength and I collapsed at last from the pain. My body curled into itself on the floor. It felt like my skin was tearing, my organs burning. The floor was hard, unkind, but at least I had no further to fall.

He leaned down as I continued to cough. I imagined in my growing delirium that he was a kind of benevolent dark figure, here to usher me away to elsewhere. His hand closed around my wrist, and my arm suddenly began to shake as though being held in scorching flames. A wail shredded through my vocal cords, and I cowered away–the touch of another person's skin was torturous.

Severus withdrew his touch as though from coals, but there was a firm resolve in his voice when he next spoke. "You can hardly support yourself. Let me assist you."

He didn't wait for a reply before picking me up in his arms, holding me against his chest as he stood up. I was mastered completely by whimpering sobs, and gritted my teeth, trying to hold back the pitiful sounds as Severus carried me quickly into the room.

The dark walls and the glass jars on the shelves were glowing with firelight, and spun in my vision as Severus set me down in a large leather chair by the fireplace. The fire was hot and made my organs hurt, and the leather tugged painfully at my skin. But I was far beyond complaining. Suddenly my tears felt less fearful and more relieved. I was exhausted and ashamed, but most of all I was overcome with gratitude that I was no longer alone. Severus had seen my mind, and I trusted that he knew what to do to help me.

My body went completely limp as I watched Severus stride through his workspace, summoning potions ingredients with one controlled sweep of his hand. Cupboards and drawers began to open, and flasks and jars of various sizes began to float towards the large table in the centre of the room. Meanwhile he took from a cabinet a tall glass jug of a translucent white potion. He uncorked it, poured a small cupful, and carried it to me.

His arm braced against my back as he helped me to sit up. I trembled with pain. He held the cup below my chin. The potion had a strong, sharp smell that made me gag. I shook my head.

"Drink it," Severus demanded. He lifted the cup to my lips, and I obeyed, forcing myself to swallow three times until the cup was empty; even though I felt like coughing it up, even though the act of swallowing made me see stars.

The pain was still throbbing outward from my abdomen, but the heat of the fire didn't hurt so badly, and I knew that the potion would ease a fraction of my fever. I also realised that it had slightly soothed my throat–perhaps it would help my couch.

Severus had held my head to help me, and I saw the sleeve of his dressing gown slip down around his left elbow, exposing the white twisted scar that his dark mark had left. The sight of it made my guts coil, and when I sobbed again he quickly withdrew.

It was bizarre seeing him so exposed. I'd never seen him wearing so little, and for the first time I really saw him. Not as a villain, or a professor in intimidating dark robes. Not even as a war hero. Simply as a man. A coarse, impertinent, severe, guarded man. But a man.

His ingredients had gathered on the table and he began to expertly prepare them. Through my weak tears I watched the precision of his movements. The potion had begun to take a deeper effect. My fever was getting uncomfortable as it strained towards breaking. I was sweating and so hot that I wanted nothing more than to pull off my dressing gown and submerge myself in freezing water–even if it burned. But of course I couldn't do that in the presence of Severus. I resigned myself to the sweating and burning, the painful sensation of the fabric plastered to my skin.

His voice came, low and unforgiving, from where he stood working. "Did you allow it?"

It took me a moment to realise he meant the sex. I would have flushed, if it were possible for more blood to enter my face. "Yes," I managed, a bit defensively.

"You shouldn't have."

"But the Ministry–"

"The Ministry be damned. You are never to do this again, do you understand?"

I knew how bad this looked, and was desperate for Severus to know that Remus hadn't done anything against my will. It hadn't even hurt until I'd woken up in the middle of the night, in the moonlight. But I lacked the strength to explain myself.

I watched the intensity with which he focused on his task, and my terror from earlier resurfaced. "Am I going to die?" I said. To me it felt that I had barely whispered, but Severus had heard.

"No," he said.

My vision became blurry and my eyelids heavy as I tried to watch him, his hands moving deftly among the ingredients and over the cauldron. The room was throbbing, stretching and contracting. I felt close to fainting, but kept my eyes open. Severus kept watch over me as he worked, and noticed my grogginess.

"Tell me something," he said. "A story. Anything. Speak."

My voice was exhausted and raw, but I managed to keep myself from passing out by telling a barely coherent story. Snowshoeing along a crumbling old wall, some Christmases ago. At some point I trailed off and began to say the words of some folk song. Soon I didn't even know what I was saying anymore, but I heard my voice distantly as I continued to sweat, to shiver, my skin tingling with pain.

I was awake, but barely. I didn't even know Severus had finished until he was there, hushing me gently. He was knelt in front of me, holding a deep goblet of the potion he had brewed. It was a dark blue colour.

I was too weak to sit up on my own, so Severus helped me again, holding my head up. "The whole thing," he said. I felt sick at the thought of having to drink it all, and very nearly started crying again. But Severus's arm was steady and supportive around my back. "Slowly," he said.

It was a very thick potion, and difficult to swallow. It was sharp and freezing as it slid down my throat, like water from underneath the ice of a frozen lake. I trembled as I took it. It felt like a hard cold stone was gradually forming in the pit of my stomach, driving out and replacing the throbbing pain.

I forced down the final mouthful after many quivering minutes. All at once, a calm cool sensation drew itself over me like a cloud. My lips parted, letting in a slow weary breath, and my eyes finally slipped closed.

"Good," Severus said.

The last thing I heard was my own sigh of relief before every muscle in my body went limp, and I lost consciousness.