A Means of Survival – Chapter 15 – Snape is Not Pleased

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Chapter 15 – Snape Is Not Pleased

When Snape finally made it back to his classroom and discovered the unlit torches he feared the worst.

When he relit them all cautiously with a savage swipe of his wand, he was only momentarily relieved not to be met with Death Eaters. The momentary relief was quickly usurped by broiling fury at what the hooligans had done towards destroying his classroom.

However, luckily for everyone in the school, the broiling fury was rapidly displaced by terror at seeing the bodies of two boys lying prone on his dungeon floor, amidst the worst of the wrecked furniture.

He scanned the rest of the room and was momentarily gratified to note that they were alone—at least for the time being.

He delicately made his way over to the nearest of the two boys and checked his life signature. The boy was alive, just unconscious. He turned him over and discovered him to be that fool Neville Longbottom.

Really, no surprise there, he had thought to himself sarcastically. He had often wondered at the boy’s ability to stay conscious as much as he was, considering how accidents seemed to follow in his footprints.

He chided himself for wasting time and made his way over to where the other boy lay, in presumably, a pool of his own blood. He cleared the broken chairs and desks away with a delicate flick of his wand before kneeling down next to the child, heedless of the blood surrounding the slight form of the black haired child.

He knew without a doubt that it was Potter—Harry, and mentally kicked himself for taking so long to get back. He should have taken the offending boy with him, but Draco had been minutes away from suffocation, and so the preemptive thoughts that he might normally have employed had been less than accessible to his harried brain.

He checked Harry’s life signature before allowing himself a small breath of relief. Feeling stupidly overprotective, he touched two fingers down and checked his pulse as well. Yes, he was alive, but he was also hurt badly enough to need to visit the infirmary.

He sighed; knowing that Harry despised the infirmary, yet knew there were no other options. He rolled the boy over and hissed his displeasure at suddenly seeing the boy’s bloodied and already bruising broken nose. Not only that, as he soon discovered, but the boy’s lip was split and he had the beginnings of a rather spectacular black eye.

Severus felt his ribs as well and discovered that the boy had at two cracked, if not completely broken, ribs.

As he carefully lifted the far too tiny figure into his arms, he thought dark thoughts against those who had done this to him.

Given that the two boys here in his classroom were not faced with life threatening problems, he opted to use the floo, in order to get Harry the fastest care possible.

Later it would bother him to realize that he had started referring to Potter as Harry, but in that moment, he was less than observant with such trivialities.

…

Poppy looked up as Severus stepped through the infirmary’s floo, a small bundle wrapped tightly in his arms. The look in his eyes was just short of murderous, and she instantly knew what—or whom—he was carrying in his arm.

“Is he–?” She cut off, not wanting to voice her question out loud.

“He is alive.” Severus answered grimly, before heading to the nearest bed.

He leaned over the bed to put down the child in his arms. The tender gentleness in his motions shocked Poppy for a moment, before she automatically switched into her professional mode.

She was, by all rights, therefore annoyed when she saw Severus turn and head back towards the floo without another look behind him.

“Where are you going?” She growled roughly at him, the displeasure evident in her voice.

She thought she saw a smirk pass across his unusually pale features as he turned around to look at her, but could not be sure, as his face quickly became more harshly blank than was typical even for him.

“He was not the only boy injured. Longbottom is still sprawled unconscious in my classroom floor, even as we speak.” He answered, speaking in a deadly calm voice.

“What are you doing leaving him alone in a state like that?!?” She demanded; the outrage clear in her voice and across her face.

“Indeed,” he said. He turned back around, tossing in the floo powder as he went, giving the instructions in a terse, but audible voice.

As he disappeared through its traditional green flames, she found herself clucking quietly in annoyance at being outmaneuvered by him and his dark wit.

Her annoyance soon faded when she looked down onto the sight of the boy-who-lived and his current sad appearance. Quickly, she banished his clothes and began running diagnostic spells in an effort to determine the extent of his injuries. What she found upon her initial investigation prompted her to run more spells that went deeper into the history of the tissues of his small frame.

At some point, Severus had appeared beside her, supplied with pain and bone healing potions that he began spelling into the young boy’s stomach.

When she finally sat down next to the boy’s bed, she was exhausted by what she had found and done in healing what she could towards his injuries.

Always perceptive—often to the point of annoyance, from her point of view—Severus pulled up a chair across from her and sat as well, looking inquisitively into her shocked face.

“What did you find?” The damnable man asked her calmly.

“Contusions along his sternum; two cracked ribs, not broken, thank Merlin; a broken nose; one black eye—you were right when you described it to me as ‘spectacular’—he’s lucky not to have lost his sight completely; two broken teeth directly behind a badly split lip–,” she trailed off, looking at her hands uncomfortably.

“There’s more.” The man stated, his face becoming darker as he waited for what was presumably bad news.

“Injuries like this,” she said, waving a shaky hand towards the now sleeping boy, “were all too common in his past, it seems.” She said, taking a wavering breath inwards before continuing on.

“That, combined with the s-sexual trauma I discovered in these latest scans, indicates that he is no stranger to severe abuse.” She finished, trying to keep the tears from dropping out of her eyes. She would not allow herself to be overcome when doing her work, but now that the boy was stable, she was able to allow herself the liberty of feelings once more.

“How severe was the sexual trauma?” The man sitting across from her asked, pulling out a dark green handkerchief from inside one of his many inside pockets, and handing it to her unobtrusively.

“The scans indicated he that he has endured years of inappropriate, um, handling, by his—I’m assuming—supposed caretakers. Moreover, in the past six months, likely the month before he came back to school, he was forcibly raped no less than three times.” She dabbed Severus’s handkerchief at the corners of her eyes delicately, unable to emotionally comprehend how someone—especially family—could do such horrible things to such a sweet little boy.

Across from her, Severus sat in stony silence, his emotions tightly sealed by his less than openly reactive countenance.

“And the physical abuse?” He asked, almost hesitantly, after another moment of heavy silence.

“The scans reveal that he has been the recipient of numerous harsh and prolonged beatings. Since there is virtually nothing in his medical records to indicate the treatment of such severe injuries, it is likely that nothing was ever done to heal them, beyond his own meager means.” She stopped talking and resumed staring at the floor, obviously in shock at what she had discovered that evening.

Severus swore his breath, before hastily wiping a hand over his lightly sweating face.

She watched in passive silence as he tightly shut his eyes and ducked his head, obviously trying to work something out in his mind. She watched as the emotions flickered across his face, causing him to clench his jaw against their obvious instability. She knew that she was one of the only people, if not the only person who was allowed to see him work through his emotions so openly as this.

And even so, I still don’t really know the full truth of what goes on behind that mask of his.

Although, she had often found herself wondering if she really wanted to better understand the darkness that existed behind his quiet and often icy persona.

She saw him finally open his eyes, but instead of looking at her, he turned straight to where the boy still lay. For an instance, she suddenly could see his emotions clearly—they were etched deeply in the lines around his weary eyes—and then, it was as if a switch had been flipped, and he shut himself back off with an angry jerk, standing up as he did so. He paced the floor of the quiet infirmary like a furious wraith, seeming able to naturally wrap the darkness of the room around him like a shield against any who might dare intrude on his angry solitude.

In some ways, she mused, he is not so very different from how he was as a teenager.

Suddenly feeling the need to break up the monotony of his building rage, she decided to bring up a thought which had shoved itself into her mind late the previous night.

“Severus,” she said, forcing herself to suppress a shudder as he turned cold depthless eyes towards the sound of her voice.

“Given Gilderoy’s absence from the classroom,” she said, smiling a bit at his snort of disgust at the mention of the ridiculous man, “and also considering young Harry’s proclivity towards injury and attacks,” she said, grateful to have captured his attention, “it would seem prudent—especially now—for him to be taught a few simple shield spells.”

“And who do you suppose should be responsible for teaching him?” Severus asked, with only a small sprinkling of exasperation in his tone, she was pleased to note.

“Well,” she said, with a great dramatic sigh, “I suppose we could ask Gilderoy for another week or two of service, but given that he is currently responsible for keeping St. Mungo’s afloat, from the limited space of his bed . . .” she trailed off at Severus’s unhappy groan, which was shortly followed by a hand over his eyes in obvious exasperation for the worthless excuse of a wizard.

“Fine.” He muttered with a low groan, apparently hoping that his quick agreement to her unspoken request would stave off any more mention of that damnable idiot.

“Oh good,” she said brightly, with an over-the-top cheery grin on her face, which was quickly outdone, at least in fervor, by his responding scowl.

“You always get your way.” He said, crossing his arms like a petulant child who had just been denied a sweet.

“Some of us are just good like that,” she said, crossing over to where he was standing to quickly peck his cheek before skittering away quickly, in order to avoid being slapped on the rump by the embarrassed potions master.

She smirked at him from the other side of the room, content that she had successfully drawn him out of his angry darkness once more.

He scowled at her once more, before softening his features unconsciously as he stepped up beside the young boy’s bed. She watched as he delicately lowered the side guard, taking obvious care to avoid disturbing the child’s much needed rest. The boy’s body barely made a noticeable lump under the covers; something that she was certain did not go unnoticed by Severus.

She watched as he carefully pulled the boy into his arms, setting the boy’s head carefully on his shoulder, before climbing on top of the bed himself. With a barely perceptible flick of his wand, he rearranged the pillows so that they would comfortably prop up his significantly larger body. Then he leaned back slowly and carefully, clearly not wanting to jar the sleeping boy, who was currently being held firmly against his chest by his protective arms.

She sensed his need for privacy, so without another word, she quickly extinguished the remaining lights in the room and started making her way back towards her private rooms.

Even though it was dark, her peripheral vision still caught the undeniable image of Severus laying his head gently down upon the boy’s smaller head in an undeniable gesture of concern for the sleeping child in his arms.

The image reminded her of another one she herself had been involved with many years prior.