Lest I Wither, by JiM (HP)

It wasn't fair, Snape thought, then sighed. He was whining and that made him irritated at himself, even if it was only in the privacy of his own skull. But it was the first day of the Christmas holiday and even he had been looking forward to sleeping late this morning. Instead, he had been awakened by a summons to the Headmaster's office. No one should have to face Dumbledore's eternal perkiness at this hour of the morning, certainly not one Severus Snape. He yanked on the robe he had discarded last night, ran his hands through his hair and decided that he was kempt enough for Albus Dumbledore and whatever disaster he was planning to announce now. Because when he was summoned like this, it was never good news.

He was grimly pleased to note that he had been right again. When he entered the Headmaster's office, after snarling out the ridiculous password for this week, he saw that the office was full of people. Minerva McGonagall was red-eyed and sniffling; Madame Pomfrey looked grave, her lips pinched tightly together. Dumbledore looked very solemn and nodded to Severus before fixing his gaze back on the fourth person in the room.

But this was a Harry Potter he had never seen before. The boy, no, man, he corrected himself, was slumped into a chair in front of Dumbledore's desk. While his Ministry robes were crisp and clean, the man himself was gray with exhaustion. His face was unshaven, his eyes were red and his lips were cracked and white.

"Well, Potter, you look like a troll sat on you." Veterans of too many fights, Snape and Potter had never been able to reconcile enough to actually do anything but snipe at one another, even in the heat of battle. In the five years since Potter's graduation, they had worked together fairly often, usually successfully. Snape had even grown to appreciate the younger man's rejoinders, once he lost his baby teeth and had grown some real verbal fangs.

Potter smiled faintly. "You look the same as always, professor." The twist to his lips belied the courtesy of his words.

Snape raised an eyebrow as he sat himself down in the only empty chair. "I'm afraid I don't have any hangover cures in my stores. Wouldn't Madame Pomfrey be a better source for Potter to consult?" There was a hitching breath from McGonagall and then she was burying her face in a lace handkerchief. What in the nine hells was wrong with the woman? Surely she was used to his snapping and snarling, after all these years. Especially at Potter, who wasn't even looking at him.

Pomfrey spoke. "No, Severus, I can't help Harry. I'm afraid that only you can." Her somber tone managed to suggest that she truly was afraid of that possibility.

"All right. Would someone care to tell me what is wrong with Mr. Potter? Then, perhaps I could help him, then get back to enjoying my first day of vacation in four months?"

"The story we're going to give people is that Harry has come back to Hogwarts to consult with our staff and to do some research in the library. That should sufficiently explain his presence without alarming the general public or allowing Voldemort to think that his plan has actually succeeded. In the meantime, the rest of us will try to find a solution..."

"Albus. WHAT are you babbling about?" Snape was beginning to wish he'd taken a long hot shower before answering the summons; his head felt like it was stuffed with mouse fur and bat wings.

Just as Dumbledore opened his mouth to reply, Potter said flatly, "I've been poisoned."

Watery, bloodshot eyes met his gaze. "I don't know. No one does. The man who did this claims there is no antidote." Potter's voice was as steady as his gaze.

Harry Potter, the Ministry's not-so-secret weapon in the escalating fight against Voldemort and his followers, had been poisoned by a spy who had infiltrated the Ministry and worked beside Harry for over half a year. Even he had not known the name or provenance of the poison he had poured into a cup of coffee for Harry to drink. All he had been told was that the poison was ancient, relatively slow-acting, and that there was no known antidote. Veritaserum and interrogation in Azkaban hadn't produced any more information than that.

"The Ministry got the best mediwizards and witches to take a look at him. All they did was manage to make the situation worse." She practically spat the words.

Dumbledore explained. "The poison reacts to magic. Any attempt to counter-act it with magical means merely speeds its progress. That's why we must turn to you."

Potter looked annoyed at being talked about. "Their poison specialist hasn't got a clue. And there's no way we could keep it quiet if I were admitted there, even incognito. Everyone knows this damned scar and I can't even cast a glamour on myself because of the poison. Polyjuice Potion is out, too. Besides, I kind of wanted ..." his voice trailed off, suddenly sounding years younger.

"What, Potter?" he asked absently, thinking hard about various poisons and their antidotes.

There was a stunned silence. Albus Dumbledore stared at his desktop and swallowed; a tear trickled from Pomfrey's eye. Minerva continued to sniffle quietly into her handkerchief. Even Fawkes' feathers drooped.

"Don't be dramatic, Potter," Snape snapped. "You're not going to die." He stood suddenly. "Poppy, take some blood and urine samples from him, would you?"
He towered over Harry Potter, then reached down a hand. When his fingers touched Potter's dark hair, the young man looked up at him in shock. The shock at his rare gesture of affection became comical when Snape yanked three or four hairs out. "I'll start testing these; maybe something will turn up..." He strode out without another word. A babble rose behind him, but he ignored it as he began making a mental list of the volumes he would need from the library.

An hour later, armed with a long list of questions from his preliminary researches, he tracked Potter down in the Infirmary. The man was stretched out on a bed in the Staff section, his face seeming paler than before against the starched white sheets. There were deep lines cut into both sides of his mouth and a furrow between his brows. A spasm passed over his face and then Potter was rolling onto his side and curling up like a small boy, drawing his knees to his chest and hunching his shoulders. No sound passed the clenched teeth, although some tears trickled out from beneath the closed eyelids.

Where the hell was Pomfrey? It wasn't like her to leave a patient in such obvious agony. Snape's eye noted the empty potion bottle beside the bed. Ah - she must have gone for another pain-killing potion. It fell to him then, to comfort the patient in her absence. He sat beside Harry Potter's bed, watching as the spasm seemed to ease some. When the man opened his red-rimmed eyes, Snape said calmly, "Well, you look like you're in agony."

"That keen observation ability must be what made you such a good spy," Potter rasped out and wiped the wetness from his stubbled cheeks. Snape nearly smiled at the ghost of their war-time bickering. "Tell me about the pain."

"No, you idiot," he said quietly. "I need to know everything about the poison's effects if I am to determine what it is and how to counter it."

"Oh." Then Potter began to list his symptoms and Snape began to grow chill with unease. Creeping numbness, chills, throwing up blood, muscle spasms, eyes sensitive to light, every joint aching...

Snape had been half-hoping it was merely some kind of zombifying poison; something to seize Potter's will and bend it toward Voldemort. After all, he had far more experience resisting an Imperius Curse now. But this was much more serious than that. Someone had definitely planned for Harry Potter to die slowly and in agony.

Snape groped his way to Pomfrey's desk, seized parchment, a quill and ink, and came back to Potter's bedside. "Tell me again about the joint pains," he snapped and began writing.

Having wrung Potter dry and seen Pomfrey dose him into an opiate haze, Snape went back to the library and began pawing through the Restricted Section. After answering the librarian's protesting squawk with a venomous glare, he was left in peace amidst ever-growing stacks of parchment and moldering leather.

It simply made no sense. All the deadliest poisons, the ones with no cure at all, were a great deal more fast-acting than this. The slow-moving poisons all had antidotes. The list of symptoms Potter had evinced in the three days since his poisoning was impressive... and unmatched anywhere in the literature. The sensitivity of the poison to magic was familiar, but nothing quite matched. The few cases where it was mentioned, the poison had been administered and allowed to lay dormant before being activated magically. Most medicines were poisons in the wrong dosage, but none seemed to combine all the elements of Potter's case. It was very frustrating.

He was holding his head in his hands, tapping an index finger against his skull when he began to hear an irritating drone. Eventually, the drone resolved itself into Dumbledore's voice. When Snape raised his head, ready to snarl, Dumbledore shoved a bowl of beef stew in front of him. The scent suddenly captured all of Snape's attention and he began to eat ravenously. Half a loaf of hot, fresh bread also appeared and then disappeared, washed down with a mug of beer that winked into existence at Snape's elbow. He finished the last of it with a satisfied sigh, then looked up to find the Headmaster watching him with a faint smile. "Some things never change, Severus."

"Hardly, my boy. But you never could resist a mystery. Everything falls before your curiosity."

"A man's life is at stake, Albus. That seems more important than whether or not I've eaten lunch." Snape looked down at his ink-stained fingers.

"Harry Potter's life, " Dumbledore corrected gently. "And you missed breakfast, lunch and dinner."

"Thank you for the food, Headmaster," Snape said stiffly. "Now, may I be allowed to go back to work in peace?"

"As soon as I've given you this," Dumbledore said. He held out a small glass tube, tightly corked and empty except for a greasy purple residue in the very bottom. Snape took it and raised an eyebrow as he considered it.

"No." His inability to identify a potion irritated him, although he struggled not to show it. Turning the vial, it seemed that the liquid in the bottom glimmered like diamond dust for just a moment.

"Took them long enough," he grumbled. He turned his hand so that the few remaining drops began to slip down the glass toward the corked end. The viscosity reminded him of another potion...Dumbledore was speaking again.

He shrugged one shoulder in irritated acknowledgment. "I'd do the same for anyone, Albus. You know that."

The gentle tone set off warning bells in Snape's head. "Everyone knows how I feel about Potter. I've made no secret of it ever since the brat's first days here."

"Actually, Severus, I would say that few people know how you really feel about anything. Including Harry Potter." That same gentle tone and Snape knew he was in deep trouble now. Damn Albus Dumbledore and damn his clear-eyed gaze.

"Not now, Albus." Snape rose and began to gather the pile of scrolls and books he thought might be most useful. When Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak again, Snape slammed a fist onto the table. Then he carefully put both hands flat on the wood and stared at his long, stained fingers for a moment. Then he looked up. "Not now, Albus. Please."

Dumbledore merely met his tense gaze with a calm glance of his own, then nodded and turned away. "Goodnight, dear boy."

Somewhere around 4 a.m., Snape put down his quill and rubbed at his stinging eyes. He was getting old. In years past, he would have been able to work the clock around and halfway through again before needing to stop. He had tested Potter's blood and hair and urine and begun a partial list of substances he had found that had to be components of the poison. He had detected basilisk venom, dragon scale, lead, something he very much suspected was grindylow feces, and more. Half of them alone would have done a creditable job of killing the boy -- why such a carefully balanced palette of poisons? And what were the rest of the ingredients?

The test parchment had been able to break down only some of the elements and write them out in a list under each tested item. The spell was his own creation and it had never failed him before. The shortest list of detectable foreign substances was found under the column where he had poured out a drop of Potter's blood. At the bottom of the pitiful list was a snarl of words so tangled that it looked like nothing more than an idiot child's scribbling. Obviously the poison had been keyed to the blood and had been charmed. It would not reveal itself so easily. The column where Snape had tried to unravel the poison itself, using a tiny sample from the vial delivered by Albus, had been singularly unsuccessful. There was a charred hole through the test parchment that went straight through the work table and into the stone floor of his workroom. So now he was concentrating on the blood sample.

But before that, he stumbled through the door into his private quarters and over to the small, ornately carved cabinet in which he kept his private stock of potions. Fingers made clumsy with exhaustion fumbled over the unlabeled bottles until he found the one he was searching for. The potion inside was a bilious yellow and his lip curled in unconscious disgust -- all his vaunted mastery and he had never been able to make this particular potion taste one whit better than troll snot. He unstoppered the vial and tossed it back, throat closing as the noxious scent penetrated. Perpessio Potion wasn't to be used lightly; it would keep the user alert and energized for days at a time, if necessary, but there was a price to be paid. The potion always took a toll later in recovery time nearly double to the period of alertness it engendered. In the hands of the unwary, it could keep a man working at top speed until he dropped dead from heart failure or aneurysm.

Snape felt the effect almost immediately. A sense of warmth and well-being stole through him. The muzziness disappeared from his brain and he positively itched to get back to his workbench and the intriguing problem of a poison that defied a Potions Master. But when he swept back into the room, there was a figure leaning over his bench, studying his parchment.

Harry Potter straightened up slowly and painfully, much as Snape had mere minutes before. Too young, his brain whispered, he's too young to move like that. "Sit down before you fall down," he snapped, shoving a tall stool toward the boy. Man, he corrected himself. Potter settled heavily onto it and leaned against the stone bench.

"Are you in pain?" Snape moved back to study the parchment. "Madam Pomfrey must have more of that painkiller she's been pouring into you." Something about the color of the poison was teasing at the back of his mind; he made a note to check out Durbar's Medieval Poisons again.

"It makes me too hazy," Potter said. "If this is it, I'd rather be conscious for the last couple of days of my life."

"Really? How interesting. Everyone else seems to think I am." Potter's fingers toyed with the stoppered vial of the poison that was coursing through him. They were shaking.

Potter's lips turned up in a rather ghostly imitation of his usual expression of cheerful idiocy. "You once told us you could teach us to brew a potion to stopper Death, professor. Is that still true, or did you forget the recipe?"

"You're wallowing, Mr. Potter." Snape reached for his quill and a fresh piece of parchment, then began writing down all of the ingredients of which he was sure. "Where's that celebrated Gryffindor Courage? You've faced Dark Lords and rogue dragons and squadrons of Death Eaters! Why can you not scrape up a tenth of the courage it took to face all of that in order to meet this situation?"

"Because I could FIGHT those. I could use my wand or my training or my fists or even my damned dumb luck! But there is NOTHING I can do about this, do you understand?! Nothing! My life is in someone else's hands and there's not a damned thing I can do about it," he finished tiredly.

Snape stared at him for a moment. Then he nodded. And handed Potter the quill and fresh parchment and the testing parchment he had been working with. "Write down all the ingredients you can see clearly listed in each column. I'm trying to recreate the poison itself in order to determine the cure." The other stared at him for a moment before an odd light came up in his eyes. He bent to his work, quill scratching unevenly over the parchment.

"And, Potter?" His former student looked up, a lock of his dark hair falling over his scarred forehead. "Try to write legibly for a change."

An hour later, Snape was thumbing through Durbar again for the mention that had teased him before. A poisonous salve brewed using ground amethyst as a base caught his attention. The poison was fairly mild, as it went, but the use of amethyst was unusual. Medieval Muggles had believed that amethysts protected them from becoming drunk; medieval wizards knew that amethyst made one more susceptible to magic. Gifts of amethyst jewelry were often given as ways to track the wearer -- or attack him. Amethyst wasn't listed on the neatly copied list of partially revealed ingredients, though.

He tapped one finger against his forehead as he mulled over the possibilities of amethyst dust in potion form. But why would the resulting poison resist all magical attempts to counter it? Somehow, whoever had brewed it had managed to invert the effect of the amethyst...or used it to somehow strengthen the poison whenever it was touched by magic... He really needed to know the rest of the ingredients before he could untangle the knot.

Potter was still sitting at the other end of his work table, quill scratching away at a different piece of parchment. The silence had been surprisingly companionable.

"Well, stop that and come over here. I need you." The words echoed strangely and Snape nearly winced at the look on Potter's face. But his former student rose, a little unsteadily, and made his way to Snape's side.

Potter extended it readily; the thin callused fingers trembled minutely in Snape's grasp. "This will be unpleasant," Snape said, then turned his hand over and nicked the large vein on the inside of the wrist with a small penknife. Potter jerked when the blade bit into his flesh, but he neither cried out nor pulled away as the blood began welling out. Snape guided his hand over to the test parchment and let the blood begin dripping directly onto the column with the snarl of ingredients in it.

At the first drop, a tendril of ink flowed out of the blot and Snape's thin lips pulled back in a grin of triumph. He gripped Potter's forearm steadily and began to pass it back and forth over the parchment. As the blood drew crimson switchbacks on the creamy parchment, words in black ink flowed out from the blot, arranging themselves in ranks within the lines drawn with Harry Potter's blood. When the fast-flowing drops brought out no more words, Snape shifted his grip to stop the bleeding. He fumbled in his pocket, then found a handkerchief which he wrapped tightly around the wound, tying it off when he was certain the bleeding had stopped.

"And ruin the surprise?" Snape nearly smiled at him. Potter must have seen the possibility of it in his face, because he grinned back. Then his face went slack and he slumped against the table. He was horribly pale and his body was wracked by shivers when Snape got a grip on him. "S-ss-sorry about this," Potter gasped out between clenched teeth.

"Shut up," Snape said gently. Unable to levitate Potter, he made do with half-carrying the man over to the cot he kept against the wall. He rarely made use of it himself, but it was occasionally useful for naps when he had to brew potions that took the whole night. Potter was heavier than he looked; Snape assumed it was the muscle he had somehow managed to put onto his somewhat short frame. He let Potter slip down to the cot with a relieved sigh.

"No, please don't." Potter looked up suddenly. "She'll just try to give me a hot bath again." For a moment, the boy he had been was strong in Potter's face as he grimaced at the thought of being bathed by the mediwitch. Snape hid a smile behind the hand rubbing at his mouth - students had complained for years about Poppy's predilection for bathing them like toddlers. But Potter was shivering as if it were the depths of winter, cradling his bandaged wrist to his shaking chest. The professor made his decision and picked up the rough wool blanket he kept folded on the foot of the cot. "Lie down." Brows knit, Potter obeyed. A first, Snape thought to himself as he spread the blanket over the shivering form. Of course he would have to be at Death's door before he'd obey the simplest command... Snape choked off that line of thought and drew his wand.

"No magic," Potter gasped, just as Snape said, "Lodix calidum." The simple warming spell made the blanket nearly glow with warmth. As it penetrated his shivering, Potter slowly relaxed, then sighed with relief. Snape took off his robe, balled it up and shoved it under Potter's legs. After a time, a little color came back into his face. "Thank you."

Potter nodded faintly and his eyes drifted closed. Snape shook his head at the bizarre twists his life seemed to always take and went back to his worktable.

It was the scent of fresh-baked scones that roused him from his reading this time. Dumbledore stood before him, a loaded breakfast tray floating gently down to rest on the worktable beside him. As the Headmaster opened his mouth to speak, Snape tapped one finger against his own lips, then tipped his head toward the sleeping figure on the cot.

"Ah, splendid. Poppy was rather upset when she found Harry's bed empty a few minutes ago," Dumbledore said softly. He held out a mug of strong black tea to Snape, a hot oatmeal scone balanced on top of it. He watched silently as Snape gulped the tea and wolfed down the scone. As Snape reached for another, the Headmaster asked, "What have you taken, Severus?"

Snape didn't even bother to evade Dumbledore's question, as much as he would have liked to. "Perpessio," he mumbled, then bit into the next scone. The second drawback to the potion, besides the wretched flavor, was the fact that it made one ravenous. He ate a banana and an apple before Dumbledore spoke again. "I know that you always know what you're doing with a potion, Severus, but do be careful, my boy. We can't afford to lose you..." The 'too' was unspoken and intensely irritating.

Snape shrugged Dumbledore's concern for him away. "I know what they gave Potter now." He reached for the last scone and crammed it in his mouth as he pushed the test parchment over between them. "I don't know the exact poison, but I know what's in it. That puts me a lot closer to finding the antidote."

"Let me copy your list and send it over to the Ministry and to a few others who might have some experience in this area."

Snape scowled, but nodded. He was convinced that the idiots at the Ministry and St. Mungo's had dosed Potter with a couple of bezoars, poured a cup of Phoenix tears down him, then decided that he was doomed. It was just as well that Potter had come angsting home to Hogwarts and Snape's research ability.

Dumbledore had crossed the room to the cot and stood looking down at his former student. His fingers brushed across Potter's chilled, stubbled cheek, then slipped down to take the pulse at his throat. The old wizard's lips were pursed when he turned back to Snape. "Poppy thinks he has no more than two days, perhaps less. She has asked me to call his friends and his godfather here."

Anger hissed white-hot through Snape. "Why can't anyone get it through their heads?! He. Is. Not. Going. To. Die. I won't let him!"

"Well, that's reassuring," Potter's voice rasped weakly. He was sitting up, a little rockily, but looking better than he had hours before.

"Harry, my boy..." Dumbledore went back over to him, after shooting a thoughtful look at Snape.

"Owl Ron and Sirius and Hermione, please, Professor Dumbledore." Harry's voice was quiet, but firm. His solemn gaze met Snape's stricken one over the Headmaster's shoulder. "I'll want them all here to celebrate my recovery."

Gryffindor optimism met Slytherin determination and, once more, they found a common purpose. Snape nodded once, then turned back to his notes. He moved smoothly around the Headmaster as Dumbledore coaxed Potter to eat some rice gruel and weak tea.

Snape sent off owls with copies of the lists and short notes to St. Mungo's, the Ministry, and the Potions Mistress at Durmstrang. He knew the feeble-minded git they had hired at Beauxbatons and doubted the man's ability to read, let alone brew anything of greater complexity than a cup of oatstraw tea. Dumbledore left soon after, promising to return with lunch for them both. If he thought it odd that Snape did not demand the immediate removal of Harry Potter, he was mercifully silent on the subject.

Brewing the poison was rather more labor intensive than Snape had bargained on. His first attempt turned black before the third stage and solidified instantly, fusing the ladle to the side of the cauldron. His second effort was somewhat closer to the mark, at least until it exploded. Potter's startled glance was almost comical, even as oily black smuts rained down upon them both. The noble Gryffindor tried to control the twitching of his lips as he remarked, "I thought that only happened to First Years and Neville."

Snape raised an eyebrow and glared. "This is research, Mr. Potter. When it happens in class, it is mere carelessness." Potter hastily bent over the letter he was writing, but Snape saw the curve of his grin. He sighed and went to get another cauldron.

It was not long afterward, as he was grinding another batch of amethyst to a finer powder than last time, that he felt the first flickers of exhaustion tickling behind his eyes. His hands trembled for a moment and he had to put the pestle down quickly. Had it already been eight hours? He could feel Potter's eyes upon him as he went back for another dose of Perpessio Potion.

When he returned to the workroom, nearly crackling with newfound energy, he found it considerably more crowded than before. Dumbledore, Ron Weasley, Madam Pomfrey and Sirius Black were all clustered around Potter and all talking at the same time. He raised his voice to be heard above the babble. "Perhaps the Potter Fan Club could have its meeting somewhere beside my workroom?"

Black and Weasley turned twin glares on him; Pomfrey and Dumbledore looked tolerant and Potter... his face was buried in his godfather's shoulder. A wizard powerful enough to rival Dumbledore, survivor of a decade of attempts on his life, a hardened battle veteran, and at the moment, Potter looked like nothing more than a sick child craving comfort. This time, no potion would cure the tremble in Snape's hands.

The headmaster herded the crowd out the door, promising them lunch and tea in his study. The last to go was Black, who was still cradling his godson against his side. His eyes met Snape's over the dark head. "Snape...," he began, then stopped. Enmity, hatred, jealousy and grief stretched thick between them, decades strong, fattened with suspicions and lies. The Potions Master could see the struggle in Black's gaze as he fought against years of habit and history. Then he ground out only one word. "Please?"

Dumbledore had left another tray of food, all easily eaten with one hand as Snape stirred his third attempt. This time, he held back with the basilisk poison, adding it just after the amethyst. As he had hoped, the mineral damped down the more explosive properties of the mix and he had a slow-blooming sense of victory growing inside him. The instant it began to sparkle under its oily surface, Snape waved the fire away and set the cauldron to cooling. He retrieved the vial with the original sample of the poison in it and compared the two -- they looked the same.

He spelled a reinforced parchment with his testing charm and tested the two side by side. His mixture wrote itself out neatly and correctly. The substance that had poisoned Potter grudgingly wrote out half a dozen ingredients, then snarled itself again into an inky blot. That meant that the one thing he was now missing was the charm that had keyed the poison to Potter's blood.

The next several hours were spent mumbling every kind of keying spell and charm he could remember or look up. He was reduced to trying the most childish unlocking spells before snarling and throwing his quill across the room. He stared at the disaster area that was his workroom and briefly wished it all to Hell. That was the other problem with Perpessio -- it made you short-tempered. But then, how would they ever tell with you, Severus? Terrific. Apparently it also made you talk to yourself.

Deciding there was nothing he wanted to hear, Snape bent his mind back to the task at hand. Perhaps if he saw the poison at work again... He reached for one of the vials of Potter's blood that he had kept spinning lazily in the air to prevent clotting. That wave of weakness struck again and the vial slipped from his fingers, falling to the table and smashing. Blood splashed everywhere. Snape looked with dismay at the mess of glass shards and bloody parchment and growled.

It was the movement that caught his attention. Droplets of blood had splattered across his test parchment. Where they had touched the drop of original poisoned blood pooled at the top of its column, they had boiled away into greasy trickles of smoke. But where they had dripped into the tiny puddle of his concoction, the blood and the purplish liquid were swirling together, spinning counter-clockwise. As he watched, the two liquids separated again, blood slowly draining into one splotch on the right and the purple poison collecting into a puddle on the left. A much larger puddle, he realized, than had been there just a moment before.

He grabbed his head and thought furiously. Was it possible? He knew about homeopathy - Professor Sprout swore by it. A small amount of a substance caused dysfunction in the body, so a larger amount of the same substance was expected to kick the body's natural defenses into higher gear, curing the imbalance. He'd never heard of a poison that did that, however.

He poured more of Potter's blood into a glass dish, then added a drop of his version of the poison to it. He watched the tiny whirlpool form again, then gnawed on his lip as the blood and poison trickled away from one another. The new poison was definitely drawing out the old poison from the blood sample. He tried the same process with the hair and urine Pomfrey had sent down to him; the results were the same, although it was a little disturbing to watch Potter's hair writhe like a dying worm, then leap away from its pool of purple.

It was counter-intuitive. It couldn't be right. Many medicinals were helpful in small doses and harmful or fatal in larger doses. This was... the exact opposite. It was ludicrous. Ridiculous. Insulting, really. It was intricate and devilishly elegant and Snape felt his lips draw back in a toothy grin that would have frightened the life out of his students had they seen it. He made a mock bow to the unknown Poison Master who had concocted this horrifyingly complex poison with its outrageously simple antidote.

Then he grabbed a vial of his poison, snatched up his crumpled robes from the cot where Potter had left them and shrugged into them. He strode out the door, robes flapping behind him. His exit was only slightly marred by his stumble into the door frame. The damned Perpessio potion was wearing off again... it must have been an expired batch.

There was, as he expected, a hell of a flap when he burst into the Infirmary bellowing for Pomfrey and Dumbledore. He absently noted that it was dark outside the windows again. Perhaps the brewing and testing had taken longer than he'd thought. No matter. He shoved past a tearful Granger and more grim-looking Weasleys than he had seen in one place for years.

Harry Potter was looking even worse than he had a few hours before. His skin now had the milky, waxen look of a drowning victim. He shivered rhythmically and his head jerked with palsy. Sirius Black was sitting on the bed beside him, his fingers running gently through Potter's sweat damp hair. He was murmuring stupid, ridiculous endearments to his godson in a loving tone that Snape would never have believed could come from the man he hated so deeply.

Fortunately Pomfrey materialized from her office just as Dumbledore bobbed into sight at the edge of the pack of redheads that had closed in demanding answers. "Poppy, get your wand." When she hesitated, Snape said in a very low tone, "Do it." She turned and ran for her office.

He could feel the Perpsessio burning out within him. Already he could feel the tremors in his hands and his thighs. There was a faintly echoing tremor from his chest and he coughed once. A warm hand on his shoulder felt curiously distant as Dumbledore said, "Severus? What have you found?"

"I found the antidote, Albus." He held the vial up before them all. The thick fluid inside glimmered like stardust, then subsided to its strange purple color again.

Snape nodded, aware that he probably looked like a lunatic. His head felt too heavy for his neck now. Hell - what if he had managed to poison himself? He had, after all, broken his own rules about never eating while brewing. He made a mental note that Perpessio also made you careless.

"It's brilliant! Whoever crafted the poison designed it so that the only antidote is more of the same damned stuff."

There was a burst of protest at that and the words 'slimy', 'evil', 'mad', 'hated', 'brilliant' and 'git' all seemed to pelt his cold skin. Surprisingly, it was Black's voice that cut through the storm of sound, bellowing, "Quiet!" When the silence rang in the room, he said, more quietly, "Severus? Is it true?"

"You think so?! What the hell kind of answer is that..." Ron Weasley's outrage was interrupted by a raspy voice that said, "It's the only answer we've got, Ron."

"Harry, we don't even know if it will work. It's a hell of a chance to take," Ron said bitterly.

"Well, we know for sure what will happen if I don't take that chance, don't we?" Harry struggled to sit up and managed it, with Sirius' help. "Professor?" He held out one shaking hand toward Snape.

Snape went to the left side of the bed, facing Black with Potter between them. Poppy and Dumbledore stood beside Black, both with their wands out and ready.

"Poppy, there won't be much time. As soon as you can see the potion taking effect, start your healing spells. I imagine the damage to his liver and stomach has been the worst. There's a fair amount of basilisk venom in the mix, so the nerve damage will also need immediate attention." Snape stopped, panting. His tongue felt too thick for the careful and precise words he preferred to use. "The second dose will bond with the poison and separate itself from Harry's bloodstream. It's a rather dramatic reaction; I'm afraid it won't be very pretty. Or comfortable," he said, finally looking into Potter's eyes.

The younger man shrugged painfully. "It's not likely to ruin my day, professor."

Snape smiled faintly and held out the vial to Potter. The trembling fingers tried to grasp it and failed. Snape caught the glass before it fell to the bed. Wordlessly, he sat on the bed beside Potter, then slipped an arm behind his shoulders. Black's arm was warm against his and Potter's flesh seemed so cold as they both held him upright. His head rolled a little and Snape caught it on his shoulder. He flipped the stopper out of the vial with his thumb, then held it to Potter's cracked lips. He felt the jerk as the poison touched Potter's tongue. He felt him swallow once, then twice, and then the vial was empty. A single purple drop trickled from the side of Harry's mouth. Snape wiped it gently away with a finger and held his breath.

One of Potter's flailing arms caught him in the face. It made his vision fuzzy and he felt blood pouring from his nose. Black and any number of Weasleys were trying to hold Potter's thrashing body down without much success. Their chief difficulty lay in the greasy purple fluid that had begun to ooze from just about every orifice on Harry Potter's body. It was running from his ears and nose, pouring from his mouth and eyes and making it extremely difficult to get a decent grip on any part of the patient. Suddenly, Potter's convulsing body went slack.

"Now, Poppy!" Snape shouted, or tried to. There seemed to be something wrong with his throat and he rubbed an impatient hand across his chest. But she had heard him, or figured it out by herself. She plucked the interfering bodies off of her patient and then began chanting healing spells in a quick, calm voice. A healing golden light sprang from Albus' wand and wrapped the unconscious man in ribbons of warm light.

Snape tried to push himself up off the wall where he had been slumped and found that his arms weren't obeying him particularly well any more. The Perpessio must have worn off. But why the hell was it so damned cold in the Infirmary suddenly? He tried to recall if Perpessio withdrawal affected the circulation at all, but the world seemed to have receded into a gray mist and taken his brain along with it. He barely even heard them shouting his name when the floor rushed up to take him away.

He was assailed by strange dreams. Long periods of complete senselessness, punctuated by short gray interludes in which liquids were trickled into his mouth and he swallowed merely to get them to stop and let him sink back into the peace of nothingness. Once he recalled a hard cube with sharp edges being placed beneath his tongue. A syrupy sweetness erupted but it couldn't quite mask the bitterness of ... foxglove. Heartsease potion. He knew he had made the very drops that curled his tongue now, but couldn't remember what it was used for. He was asleep again before the sugar had melted.

He had some wisp of dream-memory that seemed to be Sirius Black leaning over him and pulling the comforter higher on his chest. That made no sense, so Snape retreated into his orderly darkness. Another brief snatch of light showed him Hermione Granger holding his hand. What the hell had they been pouring down him? The hallucinations were really quite fascinating.

When he finally struggled his way to full consciousness, he immediately wished he hadn't bothered to make the effort. All it gained him was a splitting headache, a sore chest and a general sense of having been laid out on a slab for years. He wondered if some enterprising student had dosed him with Mummy Juice and whether he ought to kill the little bastard or award him points for managing to brew the damned stuff correctly. Something itched behind his eyes...dose...brew...it was hard to think with his blood thumping through his skull like a hod of bricks rolling down a flight of stairs.

"Severus? Are you awake?" He was spared the necessity of answering when a cold glass tube was slipped into his mouth. He automatically began sucking and was rewarded with silky, cool water pouring down his parched throat. He blissfully swallowed again and again, feeling life pouring back into him with each mouthful. So, of course, it was immediately taken away.

His eyes snapped open and he blinked several times to clear his vision. But there was obviously still something wrong, because Sirius Black was sitting beside his bed, holding a half-full glass of water with a straw in it. The close view made no sense at all, so Snape tried focusing on the middle distance.

Beyond Black was a bed with Harry Potter lying in it, laid out like a knight on a bier. But not Harry Potter as he had last seen him, waxen and trembling, hollowed cheeks raspy with a beard he didn't dare charm away and stained with tears of pain. This vision of Potter showed him golden skinned, with warm blood flowing clean and pure beneath smooth young cheeks, his lips in a peaceful curve. Even as he watched, Potter took a deep breath and curled onto his side. One hand stole up under his cheek and a soft snore began to buzz from the sleeping man.

Brows knitting with suspicion of his own madness, Snape looked beyond to see Dumbledore sitting beside the sleeping Potter, calmly eating gumdrops and reading a copy of the Daily Prophet. The bright blue eyes flicked up to meet Snape's and a fond smile curved the bearded lips as the Headmaster simply looked at him but said nothing.

"You did it, Snape!" Black's voice seemed to echo unpleasantly in time with his throbbing skull. "It worked."

"Of course, it did, Black. I told you all that it would." It felt good to have someone to snarl at.

Snape winced at the volume, but managed a creditable sneer. "I told you idiots that I wasn't going to let him die." He coughed once and it felt as though his lungs had torn loose. "Now give me the water before I hurt you."

There was a disdainful snort, then Black's careful hand helping him to sit up, then guiding the straw to his mouth and letting him drink again. "You and what army, Snape?"

"Boys, as much as I'm enjoying this little trip through Memory Lane, perhaps you could keep the volume down so that Harry can sleep?" The Headmaster's voice was genial but there was a hint of steel in it.

"Too late," Potter yawned, then stretched and opened his eyes. When he saw Snape awake and sitting up, those green eyes lit up and a huge grin split his face. "Well, Severus, you look like ..." words appeared to fail him.

Snape was struggling to find a suitably quashing reply when his brain caught up with the math. "How long have I been asleep?!"

"Three days," Dumbledore said, getting up and folding his paper. "You had us quite worried, Severus."

"... the poison?" he wondered aloud, remembering being vaguely concerned about residue on his fingertips and eating while brewing.

"No, you stupid git. You had a heart attack and nearly died on the damned floor." Oddly enough, that was Potter, sounding surprisingly like his godfather in a temper.

It was his father's fault. His father had had a heart attack at the ridiculously young age of seventy. Snape had forgotten that fact, as he had diligently forgotten everything he possibly could about the miserable bastard. The fact that he himself was no more than 45 was intensely irritating. Pomfrey theorized that the sheer number of times he had undergone the Cruciatus and various other damaging curses had put a strain on his heart. The Endurance Potion had been the final insult, apparently.

No, the final insult was that he had to lie here and endure Potter's guilty gratitude. Every time he awoke, it was to find those green eyes staring at him with disturbing intensity. Sometime around mid-day on Christmas day, he had snapped. "Why do you keep staring at me, Potter?"

"I'm trying to figure you out. You've saved my life again and again. You don't even like me. So I started to wonder why you even bothered. And I just realized that I know almost nothing about you."

Snape let his lip curl. "You know enough, Potter. I was a Death Eater. I hated your father. I made your life and that of your friends pure misery every chance I could."

Harry Potter smiled. The little sod sat there and actually had the nerve to grin at him. "Not a very impressive resume, is it?" His smile faded. "But I've grown up some, Severus. That mask isn't the real you, any more than the Death Eater mask you used to wear was."

Snape blinked. There seemed to be nothing safe for him to grasp in Potter's words. Nothing, except... "Since when are you entitled to use my given name?"

"Since you poured poison down my throat, then keeled over with a heart attack. First names seem to be in order."

Snape's raised eyebrow telegraphed his disagreement. "Spare me your overtures, Potter. I don't need your understanding or your friendship."

Potter looked mildly rebuffed, but then his chin firmed and Snape sighed internally. "You nearly died saving me. I owe you."

Stubborn brat. "Fine. You're welcome. Try not to get killed any more. Being your lifeguard is rather wearing and I'm not the man I used to be."

"No, you're not." The soft words were his only answer as Potter slid down in bed and closed his eyes. He snuggled into the blankets and seemed to be asleep in moments. Irritating prat, Snape thought, then fell asleep himself.

By Boxing Day, Potter had been allowed to leave the Infirmary in the solicitous care of his friends. Snape had assumed this would bring him a measure of peace, since those same friends had been trooping in and out every hour since they had both recovered consciousness. Granger and the youngest Weasley had been the worst, but most of the rest of the tribe had come in to weep in Potter's bedsheets and to offer stilted and unwanted praise to the Potions Master. But at least he and Potter had no time for any more excruciating private chats.

The Infirmary was quiet and empty. Even Madam Pomfrey wasn't spending much time here now that Potter was gone. She had a few simple charms on Snape to tell her if his traitorous heart so much as hiccupped. Otherwise, he was left to himself, just as he liked it.

It was too quiet, dammit. There wasn't a loose floorboard or rattling pane on the entire floor. Before today, there had been the soft whisper of Potter's breath to distract him. At least down in his dungeons, there was the ever-present sigh of stone settling more firmly into its foundations. There was the intermittent music of water slipping over rock and falling in one-note drops to pools far below the ground.

He ran a hand over his head and grimaced at the lank feel of his hair. He hadn't been able to charm off his beard and his skin had the itchy, sticky sensation he recognized from too many days spent unwashed. In fact, on Pomfrey's last check, she had sniffed, then looked at him speculatively before saying brightly, "We might be able to have you up for a short time this evening, Severus. Perhaps a bath."

A bath was exactly what he needed. A long soak in hot water in the soothing not-quite-silence of his quarters sounded heavenly. A lukewarm sitzbath with Pomfrey's enthusiastic and dedicated scrubbing of his shivering hide did not. Well, he had escaped from more secure prisons than this.

He timed it well, waiting until dinner was served. The evening meal was a drawn-out, relaxed affair out of term time. Pomfrey wouldn't come looking for him for an hour at least. By then, he could be safely barricaded in his dungeon. He had his own store of Heartsease and knew the dosage Poppy had been giving him.

Snape found that his legs were not as dependable as they had been mere days before. Since he knew that Poppy wasn't petty or suspicious enough to cast a Jelly-Legs Jinx on him, he was forced to believe that he really was this weak. It was infuriating to have to hold onto the wall as he made his careful way back to his quarters. It was especially aggravating to have to rest twice on the way. He told himself that he couldn't afford to drive his heart rate up to the point where Pomfrey's little warning charms would alert her to his flight. But Slytherins did not lie to themselves very effectively. He was ill and he knew it. But he would recover his strength far more quickly in familiar surroundings.

It was with real relief that he reached the door to his quarters. The wards let him in and he felt a sense of warmth and homecoming as he closed the door behind him and leaned back against it. Then he took in the fire burning brightly on the hearth and the scent of chamomile tea brewing and felt his teeth begin to grind together. Harry Potter was sitting in the chair before the cheerily burning fire.

"Waiting for you," Potter said calmly, although Snape was pleased to recognize the too-steady gaze that had always betrayed his student's nervousness. "And why are you back here instead of in the Infirmary, where you are supposed to be until the day after tomorrow, at least?"

Snape drew himself up to his full height, hoping he looked menacing enough, despite the flannel nightshirt and his bare feet. "Leave my quarters this instant, Mr. Potter." The effect was ruined when his head began to swim and he lurched a half-step forward. Then strong arms were holding him, one snaking around his waist, the other drawing Snape's arm around Potter's neck. Potter helped him over to the bed, propping Snape against himself as he yanked the covers down. Then Snape was being tucked in. By Harry Potter. James Potter's son. The thought was so appallingly funny that he couldn't decide whether to laugh or shout in rage and the two sounds got choked in his throat. He couldn't breathe around the absurdity of his life and the shards of his past were pressing against his breastbone.

Thinking about it later, he wondered if the shock, as much as the Heartsease Potion, had been the thing to snap him back to himself. Whichever was responsible, he found himself lying in bed, sucking on Harry Potter's finger and staring into his startled gaze. The bitter taste of the medicine couldn't even come close to the acrid dregs of his dignity dissolving for good. He was so demoralized that he didn't even take the opportunity to bite the bastard's finger off. It slid out of his mouth with a wet pop! that made him shiver. His heart continued to beat with a medicinal regularity that wasn't even remotely affected by the sound of pounding fists on the door to his quarters.

Green eyes kept staring into his as the pounding grew louder. The inevitable headache that followed in the wake of Heartsease began to thump in counter time and the backup chorus of Dumbledore and Pomfrey finally penetrated their shared stupor. Potter went to let them in and Snape pulled the covers over his head and wondered if he could hold his breath until he passed out.

"It is merely the side effect of the Perpessio Potion," he said again tightly. "I'll be fine in another day or so."

He gritted his teeth and tried to sound rational enough that they would all go away and leave him alone. "But I didn't. I simply want to sleep in my own bed. Your concern is unnecessary. Now, GO AWAY!"

He probably shouldn't have shouted. A small red dot of light appeared in the air in front of Pomfrey's face and began blinking in an urgent rhythm, the same that was pounding behind his eyeballs.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then he opened them again and was pleased to see that the little red charm light had disappeared as he calmed himself. "Go. Away."

"You need someone to keep an eye on you, Severus," Dumbledore said. "At least until the last of the Perpessio has left your system. Now, if I were to offer myself as ..."

Potter's quiet voice broke the tense tableau. Snape let himself fall back into his pillows and yanked the covers up again. He was being childish and he knew it. Hell, it was the Christmas Holiday - he was reveling in the chance to be as obstinate and childish as he could. He'd been awake for three days straight, then slept for another three and he'd saved Harry's life and he was entitled to his privacy and his quiet and his head hurt and his chest and his mouth was still smarting from the bitterness of the potion Potter had smeared in it and the taste of his skin... and Snape rather firmly forced himself to fall asleep before he pursued that thought any farther. The gabble and mumble of voices followed him down into sleep.

When he awoke, it was blessedly quiet. He laid in bed, relishing the familiar feel and scent of his rooms, the sounds of the castle settling in overhead. The fire crackled quietly, Potter's breath whispered in and out, then the sound of a page turning. He was wrapped in tranquility and sighed deeply. He nearly fell back into sleep but for two things - one he desperately needed to empty his bladder; two - when the hell had Potter's breath become part of the serenity and peace of his quarters?

He grunted in irritation, then opened his eyes and struggled to get up. Either someone had replaced his blankets with lead or he was as ill as Pomfrey had claimed. There was a flutter in his chest, but he took a deep breath and felt it subside. He had managed to sit up and swing his legs over the side of the bed when a magazine was dropped onto the bed beside him and Potter was there, arm held out silently. Snape took it and was drawn smoothly to his feet, hands on his shoulders steadying him as he rocked slightly.

Potter had the brains to release him and allow him to cross the room to his lavatory on his own, although Snape could see him tensed for action out of the corner of his eye. He closed the door behind him and then allowed himself to slump onto the toilet to catch his breath. This was intolerable. By his calculations, he would feel like this for another two days at least. Assuming his cardiac inheritance from his father didn't complicate things further. Attempting to trace the interactions between Heartsease and Perpessio in his mind occupied him sufficiently as he used the toilet and then washed his hands and face. Snape looked longingly at his deep tub and regretfully decided against it. With the way his luck was running recently, he'd probably fall and crack his skull on the edge.

Potter was waiting nervously outside the door when he opened it again. His hands twitched as if he wanted to seize Snape, but he overcame the impulse when Snape glared at him. Snape managed to walk carefully and slowly across the room and to sit back down on the bed without falling over. Potter's magazine crackled beneath his hand. When the younger man made a grab for it, Snape held it out of reach to read the title.

Potter took it back with a snap of his wrist. "I could point out that this is YOUR copy," he said.

"Nonsense," Snape lied smoothly. "I read only periodicals of substance and value. A low-class sports rag has no place in these chambers."

"Right. Wouldn't want to bring down the tone of a place decorated with bottles of dead slugs and flayed basilisks."

Snape snorted, decided that he was too tired to keep playing and climbed back under the covers. Potter went back to his chair on the hearth, which he had turned to face the bed. A silence fell. After a time, Snape decided that listening to the night mist roll down the outside of the walls was a pleasure that ought to be indulged in more sparingly. He pointed to the magazine that Potter had opened again. "We always expected you to go professional after you left school. What happened - did you flunk the try-outs?"

"You must be feeling better," Potter said with a wry look, "you're almost as nasty as normal.

"And, as for Quidditch, yes, I did try out. And no, I didn't flunk them. Both Scotland and the Cannons made offers. I just didn't take them."

Potter looked at the magazine clenched in his hand, then tossed it to the floor. "I love Quidditch; I'm never as happy as when I'm playing. But..." Potter stopped and was silent for a long moment. He looked like he was about to confess something agonizing and Snape found his fists clenched in the sheets as he waited. "It's just that...it doesn't MEAN anything. There's no point to it! Not when people are fighting and dying to keep the rest of us safe."

"Not many would grudge you the chance to live your own life," Snape said evenly. His hands slowly relaxed.

The words, flat and even, without the slightest frosting of bitterness, struck him like stones. Not true, he wanted to snarl. I have never demanded anything from my students but that they do their best! Honesty was sharp as bile in his mouth. From the rest of his students, perhaps. But not from Harry Potter. As hard as he had tried to see Potter as nothing more than a mediocre student, nothing special... it hadn't been true. He knew what the boy had been capable of; he knew the blind hatred that roared after the boy from babyhood on. As much as he had pretended that the boy was a student like any, and more annoying than most, it had never been true.

"If you had ever asked me," he said coolly, "I would have told you that great ability carries with it great responsibility."

Snape blinked to think that he and Potter agreed on anything as important as duty and responsibility. "So you decided that working for that idiot Fudge was the best use of your skills?"

Potter shot him a look of pure dislike. "No. I decided that working with the Special Ops squad was a better use of my skills. Fudge can go hang, for all I care."

"Another thing we agree on," Snape let his lip curl slightly. "Well, you've certainly had an eventful career with the Ministry."

Something of Potter's cheerfulness returned to his expression. "At least it hasn't been boring."

"Many things, I would imagine, but never that," Snape agreed politely. "Much like your career at Hogwarts."

"Much like," Potter grinned. "But less dangerous, somehow. I mean, if you discount the odd poisoning or dragon attack."

"Of course." Snape suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion so strong it was nearly nauseating. "I think I will need another dose of Heartsease before I consider your tenure at this institution again."

Potter's expression turned serious in an instant. He shot to his feet and scooped up a small phial of Heartsease from the mantel. Before Snape could begin to formulate a protest against Potter's earlier dosing method, he was relieved to see him take a sugar cube from a bowl that had been set next to the medicine. Two drops carefully dripped onto the sugar and then he was handing it to Snape. The Potions Master took the medicine and let it melt under his tongue. Potter watched him swallow it all and squint as the headache struck.

"I trust you washed your hands first," Snape growled, annoyed at the slightly anxious look on his former student's face.

Potter raised an eyebrow, a gleam of mischief in his eye. "I washed them just last week, Severus."

"And who told you that you could call me by my first name?" Snape grumbled as he laid his aching head back on his cool pillows.

"Good night, Severus," Harry said quietly, then whispered a spell to douse all the candles in the room. The golden flickers of firelight were left to play on the ceiling above him and he let himself be lulled back to sleep by the sounds of crackling wood and whisper of Harry's breath.

He was awakened by quiet voices. Harry and Dumbledore were arguing softly before the fireplace. Although, to be strictly accurate, Harry was in front of the fireplace, respectfully disagreeing with the image of the headmaster's head floating in the flames.

"No, Albus. I won't wake him. He almost had a relapse yesterday." Ah, stubborn Potter, always so certain he was right. Snape sat up slowly, pleased that the motion didn't immediately result in a spinning head. Potter looked up and nodded politely.

"Harry, the Minister needs Severus' report as soon as possible. Now that you are both out of the Infirmary he is most anxious to speak with you."

Potter ran a hand through his already disheveled hair, a sharp gesture of annoyance. "When Fudge gets there, tell him he can damn well wait until Severus is awake and I have a chance to get some breakfast in me."

Snape waited for the self-effacing apologies to pour from Potter or at least an embarrassed cough. But Potter said firmly, "We will be there in half an hour or so, Headmaster." Dumbledore's head nodded, then disappeared, cutting off Fudge's angry murmurs abruptly.

"A bath. Why are you still here?" And why are you treating me like a dragon with one hatchling, he wanted to add but couldn't.

Potter was wearing plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a faded black tee shirt that had a rip right over his left nipple. It gaped and closed as Potter breathed and seemed to be winking at him. He missed most of whatever Potter was babbling as it came closer and closer. Somewhere, there was the sound of running water.

Snape blinked and managed to drag his eyes up to meet Potter's. He had lost the plot somewhere, so he said the first thing that came into his head. "She disapproves of me on general principles."

"A very wise woman," Potter said with a tone of angelic agreement that made Snape want to hex him. Potter had left his glasses somewhere and his jaw was roughened by his morning beard. He tucked his wand into the waistband of his pajamas and said, "Let's get you into the bath so I can get us some breakfast."

"WHAT!?" Snape nearly fell out of bed at that. Potter's hand was strong as oak as it caught his forearm and pulled him upright. He winced. He would probably have bruises, which meant this wasn't another potion-induced hallucination. Damn. Potter was dragging him across the room with the loathsome energy of the habitual morning person.

Snape was trying to marshal his arguments when they reached the bathroom door. A cloud of rosemary-scented steam rolled out to swirl around him. He forgot anything cutting that he might have intended to say as he stepped forward eagerly. He stopped Potter from following him into the room with a hand on the boy's chest. Two of his fingertips slid into the tear and slipped across Potter's skin. They both froze. Snape could feel the hard muscles beneath his hand flex and fall as Potter took a deep breath. Then another. Snape's fingers looked so pale and long against the dark cotton that rippled across the boy's torso. Boy? Who was he trying to fool? This was a man's chest, strong, broad and unyielding. It felt ... good.

The sound of Potter swallowing made Snape finally look up. The look in the young man's eyes stopped him cold. It was nothing he had seen from Harry Potter and nothing he had ever expected to see directed at him again.

Hunger. Sheer want. Need. This time, the tightening in his chest had nothing to do with the Perpessio.

It wasn't true - it couldn't be. His own rather private and dark desires did not see the light of day. Put simply, Severus Snape's dreams did not come true. Certainly they didn't stand trembling under his hand and look at him with such soft eyes and parted lips, a breath away from leaning in and... he sucked in a breath at the very thought and Potter's brows knit in concern.

"I have been bathing myself for a number of years on my own and not come to grief yet, Potter."

Apparently not, Snape thought. Otherwise, he would never have mistaken any dewy-eyed looks from Potter as anything but sleepy concern for someone to whom he owed a life debt and intended to pay it off, no matter what. Well, they couldn't stand in the doorway to his bathroom all morning.

"Potter-- breakfast?" He flexed his fingers against Potter's chest and that seemed to shake them both loose. "Tea, toast and an egg," he ordered as Potter turned away.

"Madam Pomfrey would have my guts for garters if she knew I was letting you do this," Potter called through the closed door.

Snape snorted at the idea of anyone 'letting' him do anything as he shrugged out of his nightshirt. "You never answered my question," he said suddenly. "Why are you still here?" It irked him to be so uncertain of his balance that he was forced to sit on the tiled edge to swing his legs into the water. But it was blessedly hot and sweet-scented and he slid into it with a sigh of pure pleasure.

"You never answered my question," Potter called back. "Why did you leave the Infirmary? Pomfrey was worried sick about you." Snape maintained a dignified silence until Potter said again, more loudly, "Well?"

When Snape emerged from the bathroom half an hour later, he was warm, sweet-smelling, dressed and wanted nothing more than to go back to bed and sleep for another twelve hours. Instead, he walked slowly over to the chair set before the fire and sat down to watch the curious spectacle of Harry Potter pouring out his morning tea. Toast, jam and a chaste boiled egg were placed in front of him. Potter sat down across the table and enthusiastically dug into a breakfast of eggs, bacon, fried potatoes and toast. The mere thought of it made Snape queasy, so he concentrated on sipping his tea and grimacing at the sugar Potter had dumped into it. He reached for some toast and began nibbling at it slowly. He had just worked his way up to considering the egg when Potter scooped up the last dribble of yolk with a crust of toast. He pushed his plate away while still chewing, then sighed happily as he swallowed.

His former student grinned and ran a hand through his ruffled hair. "Well, better a dragon than a bird. You pick at your food rather like a ..."

Potter's lips twitched. "I'm afraid you may have to take a number, Severus. There seem to be an unknown number of people ahead of you.”

Snape wondered when Potter's humor had gotten so dark. While it was an improvement over trying to calm a quaking boy before shoving him out to face an overwhelming opponent again, Snape heard a dark thread of bitterness in the man's voice that had never shown itself so clearly before.

"True enough. Although poison isn't Voldemort's usual style. Has the Ministry been able to discover anything more about the incident?"

Potter shook his head grimly. "Drew Braisethwaite appears to have been no more than a pawn. The Aurors have finished with him and he really knows nothing about the man who gave him the poison."

"Was he under Imperius or was he simply at the head of the line of people who want to poison you?" Snape asked, watching Potter's fingers as they slowly stripped away the skin of a blood orange. The fingers stilled and Potter's voice was flat when he said, "Oh, he wanted to kill me. His sister was a Junior Auror and was killed three years ago when we moved against Voldemort's forces in Wales. Apparently, I didn't get there in time to save her."

Oh, for Merlin's sake! The young fool looked like he might actually believe that he was responsible. Snape ground his teeth and wondered why the genetic legacy of Godric Gryffindor couldn't have been something more useful than a tendency to believe one could save the world and to flagellate oneself when the impossible simply wasn't possible.

He summoned his most acidic tone. "And once again, Harry Potter is expected to wipe the noses of all of the Wizarding world and woe to him if he is merely mortal."

"I never wanted to be the savior of anything!" Potter's fingers spasmed around the orange and dark red juice ran down over his skin.

Potter's glare was murderous, his eyes the color of a poisoned well. A sneer curled his lip and Snape was faintly amused at how well his former student had copied his trademark expression. Of course, he had had plenty of opportunity to study it over the years.

"Are you suggesting that I just turn my back on the war and let Voldemort do whatever he wants? That I quit the Ministry and go play Quidditch until he comes for me?"

"No, you young idiot." Snape watched his tea cup shake very slightly and carefully put it on the table before continuing. "Fight Voldemort. Save as many as you can -- do what you can do. But stop believing you can do more than that."

Potter blinked at that, then knit his brows. He suddenly seemed to remember the fruit in his hand and stared at the mangled pulp. He put the orange down on his plate. Absently, he licked at the juice on his fingers as he continued to think. Snape swallowed and looked away from the sight of long fingers sliding across that tongue. Finally, Potter nodded slowly but said nothing.

"And Fudge," Potter added. He stood and shrugged into his robe. It was, Snape noticed, not a Ministry robe, but a plain black robe. As he watched Potter toss a handful of Floo powder into the fireplace, he wondered if that meant anything.

They floo'ed to a classroom close to the Headmaster's office, for which Snape was grateful. His dignity had taken too many heavy blows in the past week to make the prospect of rolling onto the floor draped in soot in front of Cornelius Fudge and his minions seem like anything but a kind of torment tailored precisely to him. Past the gargoyle, up the stairs and, if not for the Heartsease coursing through him, Snape would have felt his heart sink.

Cornelius Fudge, two witches wearing Auror's robes, and a young wizard who exuded more officiousness than ten Percy Weasleys could have managed. Even Dumbledore wore a graver smile than usual. Of course, he and Harry had kept them waiting for nearly an hour -- that was Potter, still flouting authority when he thought he could get away with it. Snape let himself smile a little at the thought that now he enjoyed that trait, when it was aimed in the proper direction. Fudge was an authority to flout at every possible turn, in Snape's opinion.

"Ah, Harry, my boy. So good to see you up and around again," Fudge's voice tried for hearty goodwill and failed miserably. Fudge had appropriated the most comfortable and least aggressive of Dumbledore's armchairs and didn't bother to get up. "Snape," he said coolly. "Always pleasant to see a colleague." The Minster sounded as if he would rather see a basilisk.

The others were seated in a circle that included Dumbledore's desk. Two seats had been left empty in the middle of the circle. Snape hesitated a moment, staring at the configuration. It looked rather more like a hearing than a meeting of colleagues.

Potter looked back at him just before taking his seat. His brows knit and then the younger man looked again carefully. Without hesitation, Potter picked up his chair, ignoring the whine it gave, and walked to one edge of the circle. He stood and stared pointedly until the younger witch shoved her chair over and he could set his own down in the now lopsided figure. Snape took up the last chair and crammed it in closest to Dumbledore's desk, discommoding the posturing young wizard.

"Well, well, and how do you feel, Harry?" Fudge said, frowning at the tips of his purple boots.

"Better, thank you, Minister." Potter's voice was colorless and respectful. Snape wondered how the Minister managed to completely miss the fact that Potter despised him. Of course, Snape had listened to that tone of voice for seven years and knew its nuances all too well.

"I understand we have Professor Snape to thank for this," Fudge continued, glaring at Snape. Something in the pretentious little man's cold-eyed look rang warning bells in Snape's head. It looked an awful lot like avidity mixed with speculation. He began thinking very quickly and very thoroughly.

It occurred to him again that Voldemort hardly ever used poison as a method of killing. He preferred to watch his victims suffer at his own hands. And he would never dream of killing Harry Potter so quietly and efficiently and...impersonally. Which suggested that someone else was responsible. Someone who knew exactly how to get the poisoner close to Potter, someone within the Ministry itself, perhaps. Braisethwaite hadn't ever known the person who gave him the poison, but Concealing Charms had been created for a reason. Cornelius Fudge would be in an excellent position... if he were interested in removing a younger man who might challenge his comfortable sinecure at the Ministry. Harry Potter, for example; young, ambitious, powerful and far too successful.

Even if Fudge were not the one who had poisoned Potter, someone had created an intricate new poison with a fiendish twist to it. It was hardly the kind of thing one wanted running around the general populace. It was absolutely not the kind of weapon Snape wanted in the hands of a man like Cornelius Fudge, who was either a very subtle and ambitious man or a complete idiot. And Snape had sworn he would never again make a poison for anyone to use -- not even Albus Dumbledore.

Oh, damn. Snape really hated what he was about to do next. He consoled himself that it really was a cunning and elegant maneuver rather than merely stupid and noble. A headache that had nothing to do with Heartsease Potion began to thump at his temples.

"Not at all, Minister," he replied through gritted teeth. "Mr. Potter owes his recovery to his own constitution and Madam Pomfrey's skill. And, of course, to the fact that the poison was a failure."

The expressions on the faces surrounding him were almost amusing enough to make up for the fact that he was once again watching an opportunity for fame and recognition pass him by.

"Albus told us that you were responsible for Harry's cure," Fudge sputtered. "That you had untangled the poison and could reproduce it and its antidote."

Snape bared his teeth. "The Headmaster is too kind. While I was able to determine most of the ingredients, as I owled you, there was no cure discovered, or even needed. Potter recovered on his own, with a few simple anti-nausea recipes from the school's mediwitch. Quite simply, this disastrous new poison is a dud."

Potter's mouth was hanging open in a most unattractive way. Really, someone should tell the man he looked like the village idiot when he did that. Dumbledore's expression was ice-sharp and very thoughtful. Snape was pinned by that gaze for endless moments until Dumbledore nodded fractionally and smiled more warmly than he had since they had arrived.

"But our best mediwizards swore he was dying...! They tried everything they could think of, every known antidote, and nothing worked!" Fudge's florid face was rapidly purpling. Snape wondered how long it would take until the shade rivaled the man's revolting footwear. He decided to help it along with a sardonic curl of his lip and a slight drawl as he said,

"That is why the bezoars and Phoenix Tears had no effect -- they weren't needed. All the panic was for nothing. Once again, Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived... through a stomach ache."

There was a stifled snicker from Fudge's officious assistant. Fudge himself was making sputtering noises, and the two witches were just staring at him. Potter, though...Potter was scowling at him. The younger wizard held his gaze, then nodded once and Snape knew that Potter saw the reason for the subterfuge. But something in the set of his jaw and the flash of those eyes promised that Snape would pay dearly for that comment. The Potions master sighed internally. When hadn't he paid dearly for anything having to do with Harry Potter?

He leaned back in his seat, steepled his fingers before his face and closed his eyes for a moment. He really was tired; the hot water had leached any energy right out of him, leaving him none with which to deal with Fudge and his idiocies. The quarrelsome murmur became almost restful, with only occasional phrases breaking through to him.

"But you assured me...!" "Such a thing could have its uses..." "The question remains..." "I'd like to know who poisoned...tried to poison me, anyway!"

Snape let his lip curl at that last comment and mentally subtracted five points from Gryffindor for utter inability to dissemble properly. He let the debate swirl away from him again. He was pleasantly lulled by the mostly regular thudding of his own heartbeat behind his eyes and in the tips of his fingers.

A hand touched his shoulder gently. Dumbledore. Severus turned his head and opened his eyes to find the Headmaster holding something out to him on the palm of his hand. "Lemon drop, Severus?" Snape sighed and took it without arguing. As he had expected, the bitter bite of Heartsease clashed with the artificial lemon flavor he despised. He closed his eyes again, trying hard to recapture that drowsy, pleasant sense of detachment he had been enjoying. Phrases trickled back to him.

"Bad news, I'm afraid..." "Dreadful loss..." "Lack of experience..." "Key mistakes..." "Died in the ..."

Dead? Who was dead? Potter was alive - Snape had saved him. He was considering opening his eyes to double-check when he heard Potter's voice. But the tone was enough to snap him back to full alertness, even before the words penetrated. Harry Potter was standing in the middle of the room, a copy of the Daily Prophet clenched in his hand.

"How did they die?" Cold, flat, hard words, like slabs of ice crunching underfoot.

"The mission they were on ran into some unexpected difficulties," the senior Auror said in clipped tones. "All three were killed as they tried to capture a small Death Eater outpost. Really, it was a routine mission."

"Which outpost?" More ice cracking in Potter's voice. Snape felt something begin itching at the back of his neck.

"The Western Fens," Fudge replied. "Frankly, I expected better from Special Ops cadets whom you trained yourself, young Mr. Potter."

Snape could feel the air in the room grow heavier, becoming charged as if lightning were going to strike soon. Looking at Potter's flushed cheeks and burning eyes, he thought that might not be unlikely. Potter was staring at the Minister, his jaw clenched and his lips clamped and Snape's skin prickled at what he saw in those green eyes.

There was a low keening sensation that was nearly sound as it scraped against Snape's nerves. The sense of a furious magic, barely restrained, made itself felt behind his eyeballs. From the sudden winces around the room, everyone had noticed it. Potter's fist hit the top of Dumbledore's desk... and split the ancient oak, cleaving it to the floor.

"I. Am. Not. A. Boy." Cold, quiet, intensely angry. "I am tired of being manipulated, patronized and lied to."

"My team members are DEAD!" Potter shouted. Three panes of glass in the window behind Dumbledore's head fractured.

"Enough of this, Potter," Fudge ordered, with what seemed to Snape to be an insane amount of irritation in his voice. Didn't the idiot realize what he had unleashed here?

"Your team members died because they were not well-trained. It is a great pity and we are all very sorry about it, but the facts speak for themselves." Fudge was trying to look stern and fatherly. In fact, he was doing a spectacularly bad imitation of Albus Dumbledore. The original was sitting behind the pieces of his ruined desk and regarding Potter with a very focused and attentive look.

"You're right, Fudge. The facts DO speak for themselves," Potter said grimly, tossing the paper away. "Fact - three months ago, I told you that it would take half a year for my cadets to have a basic working knowledge of defense." Another diamond-shaped pane of glass became webbed with cracks. Potter must be very close to unleashing his rage if it were reaching out to attack the very fabric of Hogwarts itself. Snape became slightly concerned. He picked up the cast-aside newspaper.

Potter continued, his voice a smooth ribbon of ice. "Fact - I assessed the Western Fens enclave myself and reported that it would take a force of at least FIFTEEN trained Aurors and Special Ops wizards to take the site successfully." Another pane of glass gone. "Fact - two days after I was poisoned, IN THE MINISTRY BUILDING ITSELF, you send my team and only three junior Aurors to take the Western Fens. They are butchered... and no one thinks to tell me about it."

Fudge blustered in again. "They are each being awarded the Order of Merlin - posthumously. They died with honor."

Oddly enough, it was Snape who said that. Shouted, really. He was as surprised as the rest and the silence rang. He stared down at the paper in his hand, two of the three faces familiar to him. A Ravenclaw girl from two years ago, a Hufflepuff from three years before. He couldn't even remember their names or whether they had been any good in his classes, but they had been students once. Children under his care. And Fudge, that supreme idiot, had gotten them killed.

The stone beneath his feet was humming with strain. Potter had become pale and silent and Snape wondered which would break first. Fudge, heedless as always, began blustering. "I understand you're upset, Mr. Potter, but I expect courtesy from junior members of my staff ..."

The silence rang like a plucked string but Snape could feel the floor beneath him subside with a sigh. All eyes were turned toward Potter. At a moment like this, he should have looked melodramatic or defiant or blazingly angry. Instead, the young man just looked exhausted. A babble broke out and Fudge began shouting, "You can't quit! I'll fire you first!" and other such nonsense. Potter merely turned on his heel and walked out.

Dumbledore, still sitting behind his shattered desk, looked coolly at the Minister of Magic. "No, Cornelius, I don't believe I will. Or can, for that matter." Snape's chair stirred restively under him and the headmaster's eye was drawn to his Potions Master. "Severus, I believe you need to return to bed. Thank you for being present for this meeting."

Summarily dismissed, Snape struggled to his feet, annoyed at his weakness, annoyed at Dumbledore's tone, annoyed by Potter's disappearance, and especially annoyed that he couldn't even seem to muster up a decent sense of seething rage at Cornelius Fudge. Wretched Heartsease Potion. Dumbledore must have coated the damned lemon drop in something calming as well, the old cheater. He wondered if he could even make it back to his dungeon without a short nap.

Snape automatically reached for the 1/300th scale model of Edinburgh Castle that Dumbledore held out to him. As the office and its seething occupants spun away, he could almost find it in his undependable heart to be grateful to the headmaster. The portkey deposited him three staggering paces from his bed. He fell into it and was asleep without another thought, his fingers still wrapped loosely around the cool granite.

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