v. bind thy hands

The vial shattered when it hit the floor.

Albus Dumbledore stared at it, at the jagged triangles of glass peppering his rug and the blue swirls of Pain Relief seeping into the fibers—but Severus stared instead at his hand held aloft like it was some ghastly appendage he'd never seen before.

It happened again. Fuck.

The Headmaster wore an uncharacteristically stern expression behind his silvered beard as he surveyed his Potions Master. "Are you alright, Severus?"

"Fine," Severus replied automatically, which was true enough. The initial flare of pain had faded after his fingers spasmed and had dulled to something less incandescent than an outright inferno. Now the ache settled deeper in the muscles and bones, leaving behind nothing to indicate his hand and wrist had been in searing agony only moments before.

What the bloody hell is that?

Dumbledore flicked his wand toward the broken vial and it repaired itself, though the potion it'd contained couldn't be salvaged. Another spell Vanished the remainder of the mess. "Are you certain, my boy?"

Severus tore his eyes away from his hand, lip curling as he addressed the Headmaster. "I assure you, I am perfectly fine. Your concern is unnecessary."

Lips pursed, Albus settled once more in his armchair, tucking his wand away in the inner fold of his gaudy robes. His left hand came to rest on his lap while the sleeve of his right rippled, empty.

"Ah, Severus," he sighed, a weary chuckle hidden beneath the breath. "I guess even you are entitled to a moment of clumsiness."

The Potions Master said nothing. It wasn't clumsiness. He didn't admit as much to Albus, because though he may detest the simpering fool's well-wishing and soft-hearted nagging, he was loathe to give the old man anything more to worry about. If it was anything to worry about at all. Severus sank farther into the crimson cushions of his own chair, glaring at the small fire built in the gaping hearth.

"Are you prepared for classes to commence in September?" Dumbledore asked. He reached for the bowl of tart sweets resting on a short, spindly table by his elbow and the bowl obliged him by sliding nearer.

"Nearly," Severus said.

"And are you ready for…certain students to make their appearance?" The knowing look Dumbledore leveled over his half-moon spectacles was not appreciated and Severus told him as much, his irritation mounting as he forced his hand to lay flat on his thigh. The fingers continued to twitch. He had seen similar damage done to nerves with the Cruciatus Curse, and yet Severus knew this was not a result of that spell.

"Of course," he sneered, eyes still on the fire. "The wretched year has come at last. We're to be blessed with the presence of the Boy Who Lived. Tell me, where did he spend his summer studying again?"

"France, I believe, but I'm not certain. I would have to write Augusta and ask." Dumbledore sucked on a lemon drop and, for an instant, appeared deep in thought. A somber expression arrested the usual twinkle of his eyes. "Neville is not the only child of whom I speak, though."

Severus said nothing. In fact, he pretended he hadn't heard.

Dumbledore persisted. "Are you excited to see Harriet again?"

He ground his teeth. Bloody meddlesome fucking fool. "Has her letter been sent?"

"Yes, it went with the rest of them, or so Minerva tells me."

"And there hasn't been any…issues?"

Stroking his beard, Dumbledore contemplated his reply before saying, "The charm on the paper tells Minerva that young Harriet opened and read her letter. She's simply waiting for a reply now."

Severus eyed the darkening sky outside the window and his hand gave a painful throb. "If Petunia doesn't have the girl respond by the thirty-first, I'll go visit the Muggles myself."

Dumbledore's beard twitched in what either could have been a smile or a frown. It was impossible to tell. Around them the silver mechanisms and multi-colored dials continued to swivel and chime, providing ambiance to the stilted conversation unraveling between the pair of wizards. "Now, Severus…you know you would attract the wrong kind of attention should you go to investigate yourself. I'm sure they're merely waiting for the opportunity to go to Diagon and use the owl service in the alley. Young Harriet will be coming to Hogwarts; I told Petunia and her husband as such when I left Harriet in their charge."

"You shouldn't have left her there," he retorted, knowing exactly type of "wrong attention" the Headmaster spoke of, not caring what that particular sadistic arsehole thought for once.

"There was no one else."

"Anyone would have been better, Headmaster." He knew that. He knew that with every fiber of his being, no matter that Albus always said "People are capable of change." The Headmaster could be blinded by the vaunted light gleaming off his own pretty pure morals. Severus had been born in spite, and he'd recognized its mirror in Tuney when they were just children. Petunia had loved Lily once, and so Severus could only hope to God or to Merlin or to fucking Morgana that she'd done right by her sister, but the Potions Master was a cynical man by nature. People didn't change. The girl's life had probably been uncomfortable in Petunia's ugly hands.

He prayed she had something of Lily in her. He couldn't stand suffering another seven years with a miniature James Potter.

"Anyone, my boy? So you would have taken Harriet in?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Severus scoffed. Snape could have barely taken care of himself let alone a child, especially a child whose mother had been so recently murdered. He didn't like to admit how many nights he'd spent pathetically drunk in his quarters, seated with his back to the wall, because that's where freaks sit, boy, the fire banked low and the cold seeping through his night clothes. To this day, he still thought of Lily—sans the drinking now—and of their last meeting.

She'd been holding a swaddled bundle to her chest and had asked if he'd wanted to hold her, but Severus had declined, because what in the hell did he know about holding babies? She told him she forgave him, that she understood all that Severus did for them—for Lily and her bastard of a husband and that tiny lump of a newborn she clutched so protectively, but Severus retorted, "It's not enough. It'll never be enough." Lily was all that was good in the world, and sometimes Severus thought she would've forgiven the Dark Lord if the maniac bent his knee and bowed his head in repentance.

Smiling, Lily said there was only one thing in the world she cared about, and he would care about it too, if he meant to keep Lily in his life.

He remembered kneeling on the parlor floor, clasping Lily's wrist, her hand on his own, James Potter's wand hovering over them.

"Will you, Severus, always do your best by her?"

"I will."

"Severus?"

"If the worst should come to pass, will you keep her from danger?"

"I will."

"Severus, my boy, are you listening?"

The Potions Master lifted his gaze from the grate and dismissed the nagging sensation tickling the back of his mind. The remainder of the Vow seemed to echo in the air between the pops and snaps of the fire and the whir of delicate instruments. "Will you protect my daughter, the person I love most in this world, if I cannot, Severus Snape?"

"I will."

He never saw her again after that day—neither her, nor Potter, nor her daughter. September would be the first time he'd seen Harriet Potter since her infancy, since he'd reluctantly stepped over her mother's cooling corpse to approach the bloody cradle and pour Essence of Dittany over her weeping wounds. The mewling brat had been the only thing that stopped him from turning heel and chasing down his Lord that very night. He'd sat in the ruins cradling a wounded babe, sobbing his blasted eyes out, until Sirius Black—that fucking traitor—arrived on his flying motorcycle.

He and Severus probably would have cursed each other to bits if Hagrid hadn't shown up and almost killed him by smacking Snape in the back of the head. The Potions Master woke several days later in the hospital wing, only to learn that Black had escaped, had murdered Pettigrew and a shite ton of Muggles, and that Neville bloody Longbottom was being heralded as "the Boy Who Lived" after the Dark Lord supposedly vanished into thin air right in the middle of casting the curse that would have destroyed the sniveling boy.

Lily—his Lily—her husband, and their scarred little girl had been relegated as little more than footnotes in a madman's murderous rampage. Harriet's survival had been attributed to a simple mistake on the Dark Lord's part, a stroke of luck that hid her in the ruins of her home from his attentions. Severus knew better. So did Dumbledore.

He rummaged in his robes, searching for another Pain Relief, but came up empty handed. "Apologies, Headmaster," he drawled. "I need to return to my stores to find you another analgesic potion."

Dumbledore waved aside the subject change. "That's not necessary, Severus. I will get one from Poppy if I need to."

"Her stores are out of date. I haven't yet restocked the infirmary. In fact, I should see to that now." Severus rose, straightening the fall of his robes as he did so, refusing to meet the Headmaster's persistent stare.

"I get the distinct impression you're trying to avoid this conversation."

Severus lifted a brow in mock surprise. "Who, me?" He then made good on his escaped and pretended he didn't hear Dumbledore's chuckling at his back.

xXxXx

Severus couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed.

It was a rather stupid thought in his opinion, though he'd been having more and more of these stupid thoughts the closer September crept and the more he remembered Lily Evans and the misspent years of his youth. He'd laughed without mirth before, to be certain, cold and snide and sarcastic, a quick burst of reviled derision passing through him like the snarl of a wounded animal. He must have been very young—that is, if he'd ever laughed at all. He couldn't be certain.

Hearing Dumbledore's amusement, how easily it came to the ancient wizard, rankled Severus's already pained and agitated mood, because he stood before the sink in his quarters downing the strongest Pain Relief he had and still his hand ached, thinking about fucking Dumbledore and his bloody twinkling eyes. Sometimes Severus really hated him. The Headmaster reminded Snape of how little humanity the Potions Master still retained.

Water splashed over his hand. In the low, greenish light of the dungeons, it looked as if it belonged to a dead man. Severus snorted. The pain had been reoccurring for several years now, sometimes only as a slight ache he'd attributed to the cold, or—on rare occasions—as a sudden spear of unadulterated agony ripping through his flesh and bones. It never lasted long, yet the echo of it remained, mystifying and terrible, a fucking promise and threat Severus had never found the cause of.

He lifted his gaze to the mirror above the sink. The visage held there was just as it ever was: stark and severe, two eyes like unlit wells boring deep into the earth, black and glinting, nose sharp and cheeks gaunt, lips a displeased slash above a hard jaw. His skin was remarkably, well, unmarked considering his prior profession and the time he spent around idiot children wielding knives and bad tempers. There were, however, several scars clustered about the orbital ridge and cheekbone of his left eye, interrupting the dark hair of his brow and the fringe of black lashes. Sneering, Severus lifted his hand to gently prod at the eye.

The glass was cool beneath his fingertip.

The pain's not from that, he told himself as he inspected the lid and blinked, looking for any abnormalities in the Charmed orb. He knew the curse that had taken his eye would eventually blind the other eye as well, but Severus also knew he'd most likely be dead by then, so he didn't bloody care about that. Whatever malignancy persisted there wouldn't manifest in his hand or wrist.

Frustrated, he used his wand to douse the lights and returned to the main living area. He had a great many things to see to—potions to brew for the infirmary, for his own stores, responsibilities to shirk and other professors to avoid, journals he wanted to read and correspondences in desperate need of being returned—but Severus ignored those tasks and settled in the armchair by the hearth. He glared into the depths of the twisting flames and, layer by meticulous layer, submerged his worthless thoughts and furious emotions into the hungering abyss of his Occluded mind.

Severus lifted his hand and stared at it. He stared at the way the firelight played across the sallow skin and caught upon the barely there etching left by Lily Potter's Unbreakable Vow.

"It's not the Vow," he whispered, not for the first time. "That's not…that's not how it works."

But what did he really know?

Sometime after dark, long after irritable Potions Masters should have retired to their beds, the pain suddenly stopped.