Chapter Text
The Patronus did not wake him so much as it did rouse him from his restless slumber and half-remembered dreams, long past midnight but hours yet until dawn. It was rare that Severus found himself these days with his head on his desk and ink from the parchment under his cheek smudged on his skin, several potions bubbling away around the dim workshop and the floating candles burning low; he was not a young man anymore, after all, and found no value in pushing himself to extremes in his post-War retirement from society. He was a creature of habit and structure: in bed (usually) no later than a quarter past ten and awake (strictly) no earlier than half past six. It was nearing two o’clock when the peacock Patronus invaded his half-slumber, flooding the workshop of his apothecary in Knockturn Alley with a brilliant silver light and the desperate voice of Draco Malfoy:
“St Mungo’s. Hurry.”
It occurred to Severus, much later when he was sipping a whiskey that Draco had poured for him with trembling hands, that had he in fact been in bed and had wasted a few precious seconds changing from his night clothes to something more decent, the night would have gone very differently. As it was, he stood from his desk fully clothed and booted, straightened his robes, downed a Pepper-up potion, grabbed his wand and his potions satchel, and Apparated directly into the emergency lobby of St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, a place he detested and had gone to great lengths to avoid since his four-week coma some twenty years ago.
The things he did for Draco fucking Malfoy.
He was, apparently, expected. The crowd of Healers, Mediwitches and wizards, and journalists parted like the proverbial Red Sea, rippling with whispers and pinning him with stares. Severus Snape: hero, villain, Death Eater, spy. He’d had the misfortune to survive the snake bite but not the bad luck to be sent to Azkaban, so he was reviled by society even as they awarded him an Order of Merlin, First Class, mostly at Potter’s behest; the damn thing had been dumped at the bottom of his trunk as soon as it was delivered to him after he’d failed to show up for the third time in a row to the ceremony. He didn’t want an award for a job he’d been manipulated and harangued into by an old man who had stolen the best years of his life from him to take down the other man who had stolen the remaining best years of his life; he was not proud of what he had done, he did not care for Harry Potter’s gratitude, and he certainly hadn’t wanted the insufferable boy to name a child after him. Severus had repaid his debt and done his best to atone for his part in Lily Evans’s death. All that mattered was that he could sleep easily now; therefore, society’s opinion of him was irrelevant.
Two Healers immediately stepped up beside him and ushered him through to the wards with a few mutterings of “This way, sir,” and “Thank you so much for coming, sir, it’s – well, we’d best let Healer Malfoy explain the situation.”
Draco Malfoy’s theatre was on the third floor that housed the same Poisoning Department which had (grudgingly) saved Severus’s own life twenty years prior; he had made one large donation to it shortly after his name was cleared and the corresponding plaque was placed in some rarely visited and poorly dusted corner. The corridors, normally sluggish compared to the Splinching wards or Curses Department, were choked with Healers running back and forth, shouts for more of this and less of that – unbecoming and inappropriate conduct for a hospital, but nonetheless intriguing: whoever Draco’s patient was tonight was important enough to warrant the descent into absolute pandemonium and chaos, and it was grave enough for Draco himself to break his one (1) promise to Severus to never call upon his expertise outside of off-the-book visits and their bi-monthly afternoon teas.
Thus, it wasn’t a surprise when the reason for the panic and drama made itself known. Two decades, regrettably, wasn’t enough time for Severus to forget Harry Potter’s voice; the boy’s – well, man’s now, Severus supposed – yelling and ranting rankled him to his core, setting him on that irritable edge he had balanced on for six agonising years attempting and failing to teach the boy who had the audacity to inherit his mother’s eyes and absolutely nothing else. Severus’s two escorts rounded the corner and brought him into the foyer of the largest, most sought-after magi-operating theatre in the entire hospital, where Potter and his wife were both being physically restrained by St Mungo’s staff and more than a few Aurors from forcing their way past the theatre doors.
“Tell us what’s happening! That’s my daughter in there, just tell me –”
“Mr Potter, please, I know this is difficult but we are doing everything we can for her –”
Ah.
Ginevra Weasley – for Severus would never truly be able to think of her as Ginny Potter – was the one who spotted Severus first. The same eyes that watched the Quidditch field like a hawk for the Harpies, not that Severus kept up with sport, it was just hard to avoid the headlines every time she and her team won their games, caught the movement of Severus’s black robes amidst the sea of white medical robes. She turned her head and found Severus’s face, her own – red and blotchy, eyes swollen but enraged with fear – first disbelieving, then shocked, then terrified, then furious, and she grabbed her husband’s arm.
“Snape?” she rasped. She had screamed herself hoarse sometime during the night.
Potter, ever a moment slow on the uptake, glanced at his wife, then in the direction she was looking, then blanched. “Wh—” Potter said. He appeared as wretched as Ginevra Weasley did. “Why is he here? What’s going on –”
Severus’s escort opened the theatre door. “Through here, sir.”
“Wait – why are you taking him through, what is he here for, is Lily all right?!”
Severus stepped through without a backwards glance.
“Why won’t you tell us anything –”
The door closed behind him, and the silencing charm sealed back around the magi-operating theatre where Draco Malfoy, Chief Healer, held a ten-year-old girl in stasis.
The Stasis Charm was an unworthy name for the series of spells invented by Draco Malfoy for the purpose of suspending a patient’s life at the moment before death to buy enough time for Healers to analyse, counteract, and treat. Exceptionally difficult to cast, let alone hold, as the series of spells required expert knowledge of human biology and a true understanding of the nature of Time itself. Draco, controversially, had taken a sabbatical during his Healer training to spend two years studying medicine in the Muggle world, then another six months studying within the Department of Mysteries following a successful research grant application, a move which was met with extreme distrust and more than a few scathing articles about how he was definitely searching for dark magic texts and a mythical time turner so that he could go back in time and resurrect Voldemort. Under the guidance of an Unspeakable who would have had to be a true savant in the study of Time to be able to help Draco understand the very concept and nature of what it was he sought to accomplish, he emerged from his self-imposed research exile – driven not from a desire to go back in time and bring back the Death Eaters who were thriving very well on their own and eluding the Ministry, but rather as a direct result of his grief at abruptly finding himself a widower and his young son motherless – with the Stasis Charm.
Severus, while nowhere near qualified enough to perform true healing spells, possessed above-average medical knowledge, so he had done his own research into Draco’s revolutionary, once-in-a-generation charm, and could truly appreciate the skill and beauty of the work. The charms, essentially, froze the patient in time itself, but it wasn’t just one charm cast once; rather, the charm required a simultaneous casting of multiple charms each perfectly tailored to each major and minor system of the human body, and were then maintained and held until they were released in precisely the correct order or else half of the body would start to age without the rest of it.
Being its inventor, Draco was the foremost expert in its application. It had been attempted by a handful of his colleagues and taught to a number of foreign experts, but its difficulty and the level of concentration required to perform it made it an almost impossible feat except for in the hands of the devoted and highly talented. The longest it had been held for was nine hours, at great personal cost to Draco, who had immediately collapsed the moment he released the charm as soon as his patient’s life was saved and he’d spent the following week unable to stand unassisted or keep down food. That was one of the few times Severus yelled at Draco in his adult life, mostly about how stupid he was and whether he wanted to make his son an orphan, until Scorpius himself ran into the room and burst into tears and begged Severus to stop shouting.
“He’s here, sir,” Severus’s escort said, and left the operating theatre.
Draco was not the only Healer in the theatre, but he was the only one that mattered: everyone else was there to support him and his patient. Draco did not take his eyes off his patient but nodded his head stiffly, once, and Severus approached to observe the child.
Lily Luna, Severus recalled – he had seen the announcement ten years ago in the Daily Prophet. Three for three, he had thought at the time; the Potters had been determined to name all of their unfortunate spawn after dead people with more meaning to the father than the mother, which surprised Severus: Ginevra Weasley had not seemed the type to allow her partner total hegemony over their children’s names. At the time of their marriage announcement, Severus had given the newlywed Mr and Mrs Potter five and two (five years, two children), expecting them to become another statistic in the post-War marriage rush and subsequent divorce crisis of the Wizarding World.
Young Lily Potter looked nothing like her paternal grandmother and namesake. She favoured her mother to such a degree that for the barest of moments, Severus thought he had fallen backwards through time and was staring at Ginevra Weasley’s small, frail body in the Hospital Wing after her year-long possession.
She was so pale Severus could almost see through her. She was held suspended in the air a few inches above the operating table, a white hospital gown the only thing keeping her decent. The tips of her fingers were blackened, her veins dark against her translucent skin, her lips cracked and the skin under her nose stained with blood from her nose. Most disconcertingly, her eyes were wide open and rolled back into her head. The diagnostic spells showed her life signs in the sort of distress they reached that microsecond before total failure.
In the hands of any other Healer, the girl was as good as dead.
“Draco,” Severus murmured in greeting. “Tell me what’s happening.”
The hospital administrator, presumably present for PR reasons in case the daughter of war heroes Harry Potter and Ginevra Weasley died in his hospital’s operating theatre, answered for Draco. “The Potters brought her in five hours ago,” he explained. “They received an owl with a letter addressed to their daughter. It was disguised as a Hogwarts acceptance letter, but when she opened it, it was filled with a liquid that became gaseous as soon as it met the air. She inhaled it, went into convulsions – her parents Apparated her straight here.”
“I assume –”
“First thing we did was administer the antidotes to common and uncommon poisons,” Draco gritted out. He adjusted one of the streams of spells maintaining Lily Potter’s stasis. His wandwork was flawless and his hand steady, but Severus could hear the strain in Draco’s voice; the life-draining effort of maintaining the charms would make itself known sooner rather than later. “No effect. Everything we’ve done to halt the poison just triggers another system failure. Nervous system, digestive system, circulatory system – we could heal the damage if her entire body wasn’t in the grip of this poison. No matter what we do, she’ll die the second I release the stasis charms, and there will be no chance of revival.”
Quite the dilemma. “Have you seen this poison before?”
“Twice,” Draco answered, despite the administrator’s best attempt to silence him by reminding him about the nondisclosure agreement and Ministry orders. “It’s been studied by our experts but – Severus, this thing, it’s bad. There isn’t an antidote yet and the Aurors are trying to keep it quiet to avoid mass panic. The only hope this girl has is to receive a bespoke counteragent.”
Severus’s eyebrow raised sharply. “You want me to invent a new potion, right now, for a poison no expert in your team can identify, to administer to a girl who is moments away from death within – how much time?”
Draco’s brow, already damp with a sheen of sweat from the exertion of sustaining young Lily Potter between life and death, creased into a deep, worried frown. “Can you do it?”
The night Severus died – or failed to die, if one was being particular – was a blur in his own memory and barely recoverable even through Legilimency or a Pensieve. He recalled snatches of the experience only – the taste of fear in his mouth, the snake’s lunge, the blank shock at the pain that he couldn’t react to, and the visceral horror of the sensation of his fingers at the gashes feebly trying to hold his own throat together, Potter swimming in and out of his vision, his last chance to know the truth about Dumbledore’s intentions for his sacrificial lamb, Lily Evans’s eyes, and a highly convincing hallucination of Lily herself, brushing the hair back from his face, her lips on his forehead with a whisper for him to stay alive.
It was a common misconception amongst both those who admired and derided him that he had been in love with Lily Evans. He did love Lily, deeply, but whether that emotion was romantic was not one he bothered to examine all that deeply; he had only been a teenager at time, and whatever he did feel for Lily Evans was ultimately purer than any base desire he might have possessed to act upon. He cared for her; he regretted poisoning their friendship; he despised himself for his role in her death and grieved the loss of a lifelong friendship and bond he might have had if he had not been such a wretched little cunt with a bad attitude and weak morals. Always, he’d told Dumbledore about his devotion to her memory, but it had little to do with being in love with the long-dead woman and everything to do with the guilt he carried every single day of his miserable, worthless life for his part in depriving the world of a witch who had shone as brightly as Lily Evans.
He often wondered why he had survived Nagini’s bite. The how was as much of a mystery but the human body was a peculiar thing on a regular day; perhaps he’d had the foresight to fortify himself with a potion though it seemed unlikely given his borderline suicidal tendencies at the time – either way, he couldn’t recall much of that night. No, it was the why that had eluded him; he had imagined no future for himself beyond Voldemort’s death, had laid no plans, had made no Will, had left behind no one to mourn him, and yet he endured. He had done things with his life since to justify it, certainly – travelled and finally saw the world, learned to play the piano in France, did yoga in the Himalayas, enjoyed the simple pleasures of sex in Japan and drank fine wine in Italy. He considered, briefly, making aliyah to Israel, but ultimately decided his inherent distaste for sunlight would cause problems further down the line; as such, he purchased a small shop in Knockturn Alley to start an apothecary when he returned to the UK where he then published the entirety of his potions research to great critical acclaim and received another meaningless Order of Merlin, First Class, for his contributions to the advancement of potioneering which had shot England decades ahead of the rest of the world for the practice.
None of that mattered. None of that had meant anything. He had only been filling the years as effectively as a man could shovel dirt into space itself to fill the void until now. This moment. He had failed Lily Evans and he had all but sent her son to his death like a pig to the slaughter when he had sworn to protect him. But he could save Lily Luna Potter.
“I need several samples of her blood and of the poison,” Severus said. “All of the research done by St Mungo’s and the Department of Mysteries to date on the poison, attempted antidotes, the medical files and the Auror’s files on the previous victims, and exclusive, private use of the hospital laboratory, stores, and associated greenhouse.”
The administrator threw up his hands. “Malfoy, this is madness!” he snapped. “The girl has been one heartbeat away from clinically dead for five hours. You did everything you could but at this point, it’s cruel to give the Potters hope. Prepare her parents, release the charm and make her last minutes as comfortable and painless as possible. It’s more than most could hope for.”
Severus raised an eyebrow at Draco, who met his gaze with grim determination.
“I can give you twenty-four hours,” Draco said.
The administrator spluttered. “No one can hold a Stasis Charm for that long!”
Draco snarled, “I can.”
There would be no dissuading him now because not even a War, the dissolution of his status and entire belief system, or the threat of death could cripple Draco Malfoy’s pride. Draco’s team moved to attend to him – half of them reinforcing what they could for Lily Potter, the other half banding around Draco for when he inevitably needed medical attention for pulling a stunt like this.
The administrator issued a bone-weary sigh. “What should we tell the Potters?”
“Give them both calming draughts and tell them to get some rest,” Severus answered. “It’s going to be a long night.”
In another life, Severus thought he might have made a decent pianist. It would have had to have been a world without magic, of course; he would have been born mundane Severus Tobias Snape, the perfectly average victim of parental abuse who instead of finding salvation in magic and Lucius Malfoy’s charismatic Pureblood propaganda might have found a passion for music. There was always something compelling about the alternative life he might have lived, something seductive he found of the idle fantasy of himself as a teenager with long hair and flared jeans, yelling back at the enraged and drunken Tobias you just don’t understand! while the Beatles blasted on his record player. He’d have legally emancipated himself and dropped out of school to the disappointment of his chemistry teacher, who would have seen something of himself in the young Severus and treated him as a son-like figure while Severus, still figuring out his sexuality, had fantasies of kissing the teacher during lunchbreak. He would have couch-surfed for a while, making a few pounds here and there playing the keyboard or out-of-tune piano at various bars throughout London. There were variations on the theme: some included Lily, some did not, and there wasn’t an ‘ending’ to the thought-piece of his alternative life; he was just attracted to the idea of the simple life his Muggle alternative might have had and the peace he could have found in the music he might have played.
In his real life, the closest thing Severus had ever found the beauty of music was in the craft of potion-making. There was a cadence, a symmetry, a mathematical precision that could ebb and flow depending on the potion. There was logic, there was consistency, and, crucially, there was room for experimentation. Jazz and the blues did not, after all, exist because someone somewhere decided to stick to the written rules.
The second most common misconception about Severus Snape was that he always wanted the Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching position. This could not have been further from the truth. Severus was good at the Dark Arts, and therefore even better at defending against them, but it was one of the facets of the persona he embodied for Albus Dumbledore’s chess set; the power-hungry, ambitious Dark Magic Slytherin spy who sneered at children and couldn’t wait for the opportunity to make them suffer at the end of his wand. It had to be plausible when Dumbledore finally moved his piece into place, it had to be set up. Chekov’s Gun in real life, in real time. Severus would happily have gone his entire life never setting foot in the DADA classroom. He lived and breathed the art of potion-making; few things came close to the joy and satisfaction he experienced when he not only accomplished a perfect potion, but improved upon the standard that had been accepted by the wizarding world for hundreds of years without reconsideration – him and Lily Evans, bent over his second-hand textbook and scribbling notes and corrections in the margins, humming their latest favourite Queen song under breath while Slughorn deducted marks for not following the instructions in the textbook, forever failing to recognise true genius right under the tip of his nose.
Few in the world could truly understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that crept through human veins to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses – year after year after year he had delivered that opening speech to vacant-eyed, empty-headed students, the one sliver he dared to bare of his soul during those years he buried himself for Dumbledore’s sake, only to receive blank expressions in return.
This, then, was the alternative life his magical, non-Death Eater self might have lived: working not at Hogwarts as the underpaid, unappreciated Potions Master, but here, in the world-class laboratory of St Mungo’s as Britain’s foremost expert on potioneering, creation and experimentation – saving lives with new combinations of potions, accolades and a comfortable income pouring in every other week, with every single herb, plant, ingredient and property at his fingertips while music played softly in the background.
Instead of music, St Mungo’s staff insisted on the presence of an Auror (“for your security, sir,”) who ended up being a former student whose annoyingly loud mouth-breathing had only worsened with age. There was little set-up required; Malfoy had asked Severus for help already knowing he would say yes. Everything he requested and more was on hand in the laboratory, including an hourglass, the sand already trickling through the narrow neck.
To craft an antidote, one first needed to understand the poison – what ingredients had composed its structure, how it had been brewed and for how long, the interaction of each of the properties and herbs with each other and the subsequent effect on the human body. It had been a liquid and transformed to gas upon meeting the air; this told Severus either its boiling point was incredibly low (unlikely) or it contained properties that reacted to oxygen, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide molecules in the air (far more plausible), thus has been brewed in a contained environment.
The poison itself was designed for one thing and one thing only: a painful, agonising death brutal enough to rival the Cruciatus Curse. It shredded the lungs and crippled the nervous system, poisoned the blood with every heartbeat and began to necrotise its victim within seconds. Death was swift, but to the victim, it must have felt like hours: suffocation, drowning in one’s own blood, a shock-induced heart attack, all of the above, etcetera. It was a positively vile concoction, something that could only have been created by the sick and twisted mind of a genius and a madman. Severus would have admired the sheer technical brilliance of the craftwork, had an innocent ten-year-old girl not been subjected to torture of the highest degree and was now suspended in the moment between life and death.
Someone brought him food a few hours into his work. He did not eat it. Someone else made him a cup of tea. He took one sip of the tea then demanded another with less milk and no sugar because he wanted a tea, not a fucking tea-flavoured milkshake.
The hourglass was half-empty by the time he was confident he understood the chemical reactions and composure of the poison; with that, he had to create an antidote, or the closest thing to it. A true antidote required time, of which Lily Potter had precious little. The best he could do with the timeframe he had was to produce a crude counteragent, something that would interact with the poison molecules attacking every single cell in her body and neutralise it. The potion would not reverse the damage, nor would it heal, but it would, if nothing else, give her Healers a fighting chance to save her life.
“Cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?” the Auror said, bitter and testy, as Severus bottled a vial of the silvery brew. The sand in the hourglass was almost gone.
Once, Severus might have returned the insult with a scathing remark of his own designed to cripple the recipient’s very sense of self and purpose. He had brewed fame, bottled glory, and would now attempt to stopper death; the former student who had barely scraped an A in his OWLs for Potions (and therefore had no business being an Auror at all unless Potter had foolishly lowered the Potions prerequisite) wasn’t even worth the effort of Severus’s contempt.
Then again, he had just spent over twenty-three hours listening to the man breathe through his mouth. What was life for, if he could not enjoy the simple pleasure of making an incredibly annoying person feel small?
“Perhaps you think you would have accomplished this more quickly, Mister Vance?” Severus drawled. The man’s face coloured. “Inform Healer Malfoy I am on my way back to the theatre. Try not to breathe your germs all over your boss’s only hope to save his daughter’s life.”
It was too delicate a potion to risk a direct Apparate into the theatre lobby, and the magi-operating theatres were all reinforced with anti-Apparition wards, both in case a patient panicked during a procedure and vanished halfway through surgery, and to prevent intruders from interrupting the operation. Severus was escorted back through the wards with a full Auror detail. The citizens and journalists had been cleared from the corridors, instead replaced by Ministry officials.
In the ward, Lily Potter’s parents had been joined by a slate of familiar faces. Molly and Arthur Weasley, as well as almost every single feral member of the extended Weasley clan, were busy consoling their daughter and did not notice Severus slipping past the ward towards the theatre behind his escorts. Ronald Weasley was present, though whether it was in his capacity as an Auror or as a family member was hard to discern; he was barking loudly at a couple of his colleagues, ostensibly to direct them in the investigation to find and capture the sadistic person behind the assassination attempt of a little girl who also happened to be his niece. Severus wondered whether he’d be so boisterous about the whole affair if it had been any other child in Britain in Draco’s operating theatre.
Hermione Granger (for she, unlike Ginevra Weasley, had not adopted her husband’s surname; Severus approved of the modern statement, but not of her career choice), was present as well, sitting beside a despairing Potter, rubbing her hand across his back, which would do nothing to quell the persistent rumours of an affair between them despite their painful lack of chemistry. It was she who spotted Severus, but she made no commotion about it. All she did was murmur something to Potter, who immediately looked up and locked eyes with Severus across the room.
A basic level of Occlumency was required for all Aurors. Potter had improved since his teenage years – still not enough, in Severus’s opinion, for the Head Auror of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement – but at that moment he was as open as a raw and bleeding wound. Severus did not need to invade Potter’s mind at all to feel every iota of his grief and desperation and terror. The silent appeal in Potter’s eyes was as deafening as if he had screamed it:
Please.
Severus made no promises. He entered the theatre, Potter’s eyes burning on his shoulders long after the door sealed shut behind him. He was greeted by the exhausted, harried hospital administrator, then permitted to approach Draco, the vial ready in his hands.
Draco looked atrocious. He was still standing, but only because a handful of Healers were healing his muscles in real time. His robes were drenched with sweat, his hair was plastered to his skull. The wand in his hand trembled violently and he looked close to passing out – but still he held the Stasis Charm. Severus dreaded to think how he had managed to keep himself awake and standing all this time, let alone relieved himself. There was no such thing as dignity in the magi-operating theatre, he supposed.
A small but not insignificant detail caught Severus’s intrigue: the sleeves of Draco’s white robes were rolled up to his elbows, baring his soul’s deepest and ugliest wound to all. Like Severus’s Dark Mark, Draco’s was faded but would forever tarnish his skin despite many attempts over the years by many experts to erase it. Short of amputation, most had agreed, the Dark Mark was permanent. To many in the wizarding world, it was fitting punishment for the nigh-unforgivable crime of joining Voldemort’s ranks, willingly or not – to remain branded for life, bearing the perpetual reminder of their sins for which they would never be truly forgiven. For a society that was supposedly neo-pagan and non-religious, the cultural Christianity was both pervasive and sickening.
This was not what had drawn Severus’s interest; rather, it was the fact that not a single Healer or attendee in the theatre was staring at Draco’s Dark Mark or even appeared perturbed by it, except Severus himself.
“Had me worried there for a while, Severus,” Draco said as Severus joined him. His voice was hoarse.
“You promised me twenty-four hours. There’s still six minutes to spare.”
Draco choked on a laugh. “Remember, back at Hogwarts –” He grimaced, breathed hard; sweat dripped down his left temple which was wiped away by a nurse, and he tried again. “Back at school, you used to – lecture me – all the time, about my ‘toxic need to show off’ –”
“Quite,” Severus said. “And now the eyes of the entire British wizarding world are upon this ward. Do try not to disappoint them.”
“I won’t if you won’t,” Draco replied.
No pressure.
“I’ll prepare the family,” the administrator murmured. “Good luck, Healer Malfoy. Snape.”
Draco breathed in, breathed out, steeled himself, and mobilised his team. “Ready when you are, Severus.”
How could one ever truly be ready for something like this? The last time he’d had to save a life with precious little time to spare it had been Draco Malfoy himself, shredded by Severus’s own spell cast by Dumbledore’s stupid, careless then-teenaged boy who could do no wrong. Severus was long past the point of despising how his life seemed irrevocably intertwined with Potter’s. Now it was just becoming plain incestuous.
He approached Lily’s prone body, trapped in time some thirty-odd hours prior. Draco nodded at him. Severus tipped the vial into the girl’s mouth, then stepped away.
“You think Splinching is bad,” Draco had commented, years ago, after he’d successfully performed his first Stasis Charm but had to intervene when an arrogant young Healer attempted to replicate it on a patient without proper training, “you haven’t seen someone torn apart and sundered by time.”
Severus never wanted to.
Draco conducted time like a maestro conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. He released the girl’s digestive system and brought her metabolism back into the timeline, then her heart for one awful, final shuddering pump. It was like watching a delicate cascade, the spells holding her body balanced impossibly between allowing the potion to detox her system with the last flutter of circulation while holding the rest of the damage at bay, all without causing permanent damage because the human body was simply not meant to exist in more than one timestream.
“Resynchronisation complete,” Malfoy gasped as he released the final stream. “She’s back in our timeline.”
She had no heartbeat.
“Sir –” one of the Healers said.
“Give it a second,” Malfoy said.
“Malfoy, we need to –”
“Just give her a fucking second!”
No one moved. No one breathed.
“Defibrillation Charm,” Malfoy ordered.
A Healer shocked her with a spell. Lily’s body convulsed. Nothing.
“Again.”
Still nothing.
“Again.”
Third convulsion.
The diagnostic spells screamed to life in time with Lily Potter’s beating heart.
Someone shouted, “We have sinus rhythm!”
Draco ordered, “Just like we rehearsed – go!”
It seemed, in the twenty-four hours Severus had worked on the antidote, the team had all but perfected their approach to save the girl’s life. Draco had drained himself of his magical core, and thus could only bark orders and direct the theatre in his life-saving opera, and the team obeyed everything he said.
Severus had no business staying in the room, but no one ordered him to leave, so he watched the rest of the procedure with grim curiosity. It was like observing a particularly gruesome ballet: the team split the girl’s chest open and severed her ribs to levitate her shredded lungs out of the cavity to apply healing spells directly while another performed a particularly intricate charm to merge oxygen into her bloodstream to force circulation, so that the counteragent to the poison could continue to unbind the molecules from her cells. Another Healer removed the top of her skull to relieve the pressure of her swollen brain.
Few other Healers and Mediwizards or witches in the world would dare attempt such invasive and brutal techniques. Indeed, the first time Draco had shown his case study to the then-Chief Healer and Board (shortly after his two-year sabbatical in the Muggle world) he’d been suspended for a week for proposing “highly dangerous and irresponsible Muggle butchery in our sacred halls of healing”, and the Daily Prophet took great pleasure in calling him the ‘Butcher of St Mungo’s’ until Hermione Granger, of all people, wrote an op-ed lambasting his naysayers for drawing on archaic stereotypes of Muggles when in fact the Muggle world had advanced far beyond magic’s current abilities to effectively save lives. It hadn’t been enough to make Draco the new darling of society, but it had been enough to overturn the suspension. The hospital permitted him to use the technique on one patient, with the patient’s full consent, with the threat of immediate and permanent removal from work if the procedure went wrong. Any other Healer would have given up and toed the line, but there seemed to be no limit to Draco’s ego, pride and desire to make a better name for himself and his son.
It seemed an age and a half had passed, but it had only been half an hour by the time the Mediwitch maintaining Lily Potter’s life signs announced, “She’s stable! Critical, but stable.”
There were few things in life more gratifying than hearing an entire theatre of Healers release a cheer. Severus stepped beside Draco – who had collapsed into a chair and looked ready to slip into a two-week coma – and grasped his shoulder tightly.
“Well done,” Severus murmured.
Draco exhaled, bowed his head and closed his eyes, the muscles in his jaw clenched as he held back tears.
Severus did not stay for the aftermath, nor would he be conned into meeting the Potter-Weasley clan despite the administrator’s noble if deluded efforts to encourage him in joining the delivery of the good news. He stepped out of the ward and Disapparated, straight back to his bedroom above his apothecary. He kicked off his boots, removed his outer robes, laid down on his bed, and slept for sixteen blessed, dreamless hours straight.
The following fortnight was, without any exaggeration or unnecessary dramatics on Severus’s part, the most insufferable period of his entire life, including the six soul-destroying years Harry Potter had attended Hogwarts. Post-coma twenty years ago, he’d woken to find himself flooded with Howlers from random civilians and threats to hunt him down and end his life for being a traitor from loyal Death Eaters on the run from the interim Ministry of Magic. He’d been the subject of countless smear pieces in the Daily Prophet. He’d been hounded by journalists wanting to know the tale of the Spy and the cretins uncovered his childhood and teenage years for cringeworthy profile pieces he refused to endorse or comment on. The Order of Merlin made things worse: even more requests for interviews (ignored) and hate mail from his detractors (occasionally skimmed but always burned). As time went on and he ignored the world, the world started to ignore him, which was what he wanted and how he’d been able to establish a modest, mostly anonymous apothecary in Knockturn Alley with little fanfare or ripples in the media.
Tragically, having a hand in saving the life of Britain’s most famous wizard’s daughter placed him squarely back on the radar of the vultures that comprised the very society he cared absolutely nothing for. He used to receive two to three customers per day; within hours of the Daily Prophet’s piece on the miraculous recovery of one Lily Luna Potter, his shop was inundated. With customers, with journalists pretending to be customers, with fan mail and hate mail, with requests for interviews and people begging for impossible cures for incurable diseases. He promptly warded his shop, placed a ‘Closed’ sign out the front, and spent a solid week in the Bahamas, only returning home when he received word that Draco had woken from his six-day nap and was back home on bedrest and forced medical leave from St Mungo’s, recovering from what the papers were calling the ‘feat of the century’ – there had even been some murmurs about an Order of Merlin. Severus Apparated directly from his apothecary into Draco’s penthouse apartment in London (as Malfoy Manor was still burning twenty years later behind the wards and would likely never be habitable again in this lifetime; not, Severus knew, that Draco had any intention of returning to seat of Voldemort’s power ever again, let alone subject his son to it) and ate dinner with Draco – a light feast prepared by the well-paid house elf – before retiring to the drawing room where Draco cracked out a bottle of whiskey.
“I’ve been saving this for a special occasion,” Draco said, showing Severus a bottle of Macallan “M” – a Muggle whiskey aged in casks for 70 years and bottled in a hand-blown decanter worth almost as much as the liquid gold inside it. “I think we’ve more than earned it.”
“Still?” Severus murmured, watching Draco’s hand trembling as he poured Severus a finger of whiskey.
“It’ll pass.” Draco managed a wry smile. “Physician, heal thyself.”
Severus sighed. “Tell me the truth, Draco – if I’d not returned to the theatre when I did –”
“I’d have lost her,” Draco said.
Many wondered why Draco Malfoy, a few years after the War, signed up for the Healer training course on offer at St Mungo’s. Some believed it was a matter of ego; others thought he was searching for a way to rid himself of the Dark Mark; the more romantic of his critics said it was because he wished to find a way to cure his dying wife of the blood curse that had plagued her family for generations. Perhaps it involved a little of all, but Severus would never forget what Draco had told him, a few weeks into his classes: I’m tired of hurting people. I want to heal instead.
Narcissa, while she lived, had never understood what Draco was trying to accomplish. The social status and rehabilitation of the Malfoy name, certainly; but the core tenets of what it meant to be a Healer? She could not comprehend Draco’s dedication to his chosen craft. Of course he nearly died to save his patient. He had pushed himself to such an extreme not because it was Harry Potter’s daughter, not because if he didn’t, he would have become the most hated man in magical Britain overnight; he had done it because he was a Healer and Lily Potter had been his patient, and Draco had sworn an oath. That she was Harry Potter’s daughter had nothing to do with it.
So Severus knew what it had cost Draco to admit that he had overestimated himself; almost, if not more than, what it had cost him to attempt such a feat in the first place. Thank God Severus had not had to waste precious seconds changing out of pyjamas, he thought, but it seemed a poor time to comment on it.
Instead, Severus simply said, “I’m proud of you.”
Draco inhaled sharply. “I always get worried when you say shit like that,” he accused. “Are you dying?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then don’t say shit like that.”
Had Lucius Malfoy not been eighteen years dead, Severus would have killed him himself fifty times over for what he did to his son; treatment that Draco, fortunately, refused to apply to his own offspring.
“How is Scorpius?” Severus asked.
“He’s well. He can’t decide whether he’s angry at me for risking myself like that, or overjoyed that I saved his best friend’s sister.”
No accounting for taste, that child, but speaking of the Potters: “Potter paid me a visit yesterday.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Me too. He donated a disgusting amount to St Mungo’s, so now he’s the guest of honour at next month’s donor dinner and I have to sit at a table with him and listen to him lie about how wonderful he thinks I am.”
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
“It gets worse. Scorpius and I have been invited over for the Potter’s Christmas dinner.”
“My condolences.”
“On the plus side –” Draco waved a tremoring hand carelessly in the air. “Scorpius’s schoolmates have stopped calling him Death Eater Junior, among other such unpleasant rumours. Nothing quite works like the charm of the golden boy’s public endorsement. I spent twenty damn years rehabilitating my image and all it took for the public to forgive me was saving Harry bloody Potter’s child. Can’t believe I didn’t think about doing it sooner.” Draco sighed, took a sip of his whiskey, and moaned. “Merlin, that’s smooth.”
Severus sipped his drink as well. It was smooth.
“So?” Draco prompted.
“So what.”
“What did Potter want with you?”
Snape had been home for all of fifteen minutes when a knock hammered on his door; another fucking journalist, he’d thought, and opened the door with every intention to curse the intruder beyond recognition, criminal charges be damned, only to find himself face to face with Harry Potter.
Potter had exonerated him post-War, but since his trial – for which Severus had been unconscious – they’d had little to nothing to do with each other in person. Potter had attempted to reach out several times by owl, but after being steadfastly ignored, the insufferable boy turned his attention-seeking ways towards nominating Severus for the Order of Merlin and naming an entire human child borne from his loins after him. Positively unhinged behaviour on Potter’s part.
That night in St Mungo’s, Severus had only seen Potter from afar. Up close, he realised with a daunting shock that Potter had aged. Not badly, he wasn’t old; it was just an unwelcome reminder that twenty years had passed them both by. Potter was very much no longer the lanky teenager with the weight of the world thrust upon his gangly shoulders. He was a man in every sense of the word. He had filled out since Hogwarts, though his hair was as ridiculous as always; he sported a five o’clock shadow and looked like he was in dire need of a long nap. Severus imagined he must have looked badly-aged and old to Potter, with the greys at his temples and his face marred by decades of scowling.
“Snape,” Potter said, and with that, the tacit understanding between them to never bother each other for as long as they both lived was shattered.
“Mr Potter,” Severus unwillingly replied.
“Can I come in?”
Clearly his deranged behaviour had only been exacerbated by being put on forced leave by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, leaving Weasley to take over the Auror Task Force to trace the letter and hunt the neo-Death Eater cell responsible for the sadistic assassination attempt of a little girl.
Tempting as it was to turn Potter away, Severus sighed and stepped aside. “If you feel you must.”
Potter entered the apothecary. Severus closed the door behind him and raised the wards.
“I thought you’d like to know that Lily is doing well,” Potter said, glancing around the shelves to avoid eye contact. “She came home yesterday.”
Severus was not displeased to know it.
“Ginny didn’t think you’d accept an invitation to come over for dinner,” Potter continued when it became clear Severus had little to say on the matter.
“She is correct.”
“She wanted to send you flowers, or a gift basket. Seems an insufficient reward for saving my daughter’s life –”
“Don’t you dare nominate me for another Order of Merlin,” Severus snapped.
Potter faced him now, and spread his hands before himself helplessly. “I don’t know how to thank you. I didn’t back then and I still don’t now, but –”
“You may thank me by never naming another child after me again,” Severus responded tartly. “What an unimaginably cruel thing you’ve done to your son.”
Potter had gained a sense of humour over the years. He bit back a smile and ducked his head. “You know, Albus is keen to meet one of his namesakes. Now more than ever.”
“And give the child even more of a reason to hate himself? I think not.”
“Snape – Severus,” Potter said. “I know I’m probably nothing more than a reminder of the worst years of your life. You didn’t want anything to do with me after the War and I respected that, I still do –”
“How dare you blatantly lie to my face like that.”
“– but you didn’t have to help save Lily’s life. I didn’t even know Malfoy had asked you to come. I guess what I’m trying to say – very badly – is that I’m grateful to you, and if there is ever anything I can do to repay you –”
“Spare me,” Severus said. “There is no debt between us, Potter. And before I am forced to listen to you drivel on any longer about it, I would have done the same for any child.”
Over the years, Potter had learned a new expression: knowing. His eyes didn’t twinkle like Dumbledore’s did when he was impersonating a mischievous imp, but it wasn’t far off – that self-righteous half-smirk, half smile as if to say I know what you’re really about, Severus Snape, you can’t hide from me anymore. Severus wanted to smack it right off Potter’s face.
“Lily asked me to give you this,” Potter said, and passed him a scroll of parchment, which bore a short, handwritten message in the inelegant script of a child. Severus read it with a raised eyebrow:
Dear Mr Snape,
Thank you for saving my life.
I don’t remember anything about that night,
but Healer Malfoy told me he was only able
to heal me because of your potion.
I hope I get to meet you one day to
shake your hand and say thank you.
Much love,
Lily Luna
Young Lily Luna was not particularly eloquent nor well-read, but the note caused something sharp and warm to clench in Severus’s chest, and his throat – which had never properly healed from Nagini’s bite, and would forever bear scars which he hid beneath high-collared shirts and robes – tightened. He rolled the parchment back up and tucked it into the inside pocket of his robe close to his heart.
“You may tell her I appreciate the gesture,” Severus said shortly.
Potter gazed at him with a curious expression, as if he knew full well that his daughter’s note had touched Severus in some deep, indiscernible way.
“I will,” Potter said, and held out his hand.
Severus stared at it, then, grudgingly, shook it once. “Let’s not make this a regular occurrence, Mr Potter,” he drawled.
“You really are a miserable git, aren’t you.”
“I am. And I trust you can find your own way out.”
Potter made to leave, but Severus stopped him.
“Potter. Perhaps there is something you could do for me.”
“Anything,” Potter said.
“I will kill the next journalist who shows up at my apothecary trying to get an interview on the sly.”
The corner of Potter’s mouth twitched. “Noted.”
The journalists were gone the next morning.
So to answer Draco’s question: what did Potter want with him? Severus was not entirely sure. The only thing Severus ever wanted was to be left alone. He had his shop, he had his occasional customers, he had his privacy, he had his potions and research, he now owned a second-hand upright piano and a record player that played Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits, he had Minerva, he had Draco, and he had his godson: he was content.
Then he thought of the framed letter sitting on his work desk and glared down into his whiskey, displeased by the warm sensation in his chest. “He dropped off a small token of gratitude from his daughter.”
Draco refilled Severus’s glass. “To Lily Luna Potter,” he said, raising his own.
Severus clinked their glasses together. “May she live a long and healthy life.”