literature

Medicine

Deviation Actions

ls269's avatar
By
Published:
2.4K Views

Literature Text

"Take your shirt off."

"Excuse me?"

"Take your shirt off."

Severus hesitated. But she was clearly not in a mood to be argued with.

He took off the shirt, trying not to wince as the motion jarred his cuts and scratches. It was a relief, really. The thin cotton was weighing too heavy on his bruised skin. But then, even the air was weighing too heavy on his bruised skin. In this condition, the force of gravity felt like an assault.

She was not gentle, but then he hadn't wanted her to be. She dabbed at his wounds ferociously with a Dittany-soaked cloth – actually, it was more of a jab than a dab. But he didn't flinch. He set his jaw and tensed his muscles – hardened himself to the whole thing. Not because he was afraid it would hurt. How could he be afraid of that now? He was afraid it would feel good. He was afraid she would start to cry, or put her arms round him, and then he wouldn't have been able to contain himself. He was afraid some kind of emotion would surprise him, and he wouldn't be able to hold it together anymore.    

As she worked over his bruises and cuts, she would push him roughly into the position she needed, and he would resist her, just enough that she pushed him harder, but not enough for her to give up and storm away. He wanted her to stay, but stay angry.

She tied the bandages so tight that they pinched his skin. She left the sugar out of those foul-tasting potions. She did it all in silence, with her lips pressed very firmly together, until they were white. And the scowling was medicine too – every second of aggression helped him to compose himself. He wouldn't have known what to do if she'd been nice.

Since she was tight-lipped and angry, he could raise his eyebrows and mock her for being silly and emotional. With her own pain to distract her, she would never realize how close to the surface his was.

She stamped her heels on the floor, slammed cupboard doors, and nearly smashed the glass potion bottles as she put them back on their shelves.

Severus sat back against his pillows and watched her calmly.    

"You're turning into Madam Pomfrey," he muttered.

"There are worse things to turn into," she croaked. Her eyes were very red.

She had bandaged up the Dark Mark. Whether this was because it needed to heal, or because she couldn't stand looking at it, Severus didn't know. It still hurt, but that was probably more psychological than magical. It was a mark of his enslavement, like those tea-towels and pillow-cases the House Elves had to wear. It meant he could never run away.

Her eyes were drawn to those bandages a lot. It was as though she could see through them.

"Look, I didn't ask for it," he murmured, following her gaze. "There was no way I was getting out of there alive without taking the Dark Mark."

Lily slammed shut a dusty tome about the after-effects of the Unforgivable Curses and glared at him. "Why are you doing this?" she asked abruptly. "You said – you said you hated doing this. You said I had no idea what you went through. You said every day you were risking your soul. Why are you still doing it?"

Severus hesitated. Their roles had been reversed. Now it was Lily who was demanding answers – asking him over and over again why he was doing what he was doing. And he had to pretend he had reasons other than her.

He shrugged, and that just incensed her further.

"Stop doing it," she ordered. Her cheeks were glowing. She looked as though her body was being pulled, heart-first, towards him, and the rest of her was trying to claw its way back.

"And how would you like me to do that?" he asked patiently. "Cut my arm off?"

"Tell him you've made a mistake!"

"Of course," said Snape. "Why didn't I think of that? He's very sympathetic to that kind of thing."  

Lily stuck her jaw out defiantly. "I don't care how you do it. It's too dangerous now, Sev. You've got to get out."

"You don't understand," he croaked. His voice was cracking now with the effort of staying calm. He wanted to tell her that he hadn't planned any of this. He had tried to plan, but plans never seemed to work out for him. Everyone he met was crazy, and selfish, and grasping, and it was exhausting, trying to work out what they would do next. It was all he could do just to stay alive, and keep her alive. He couldn't steer.

"I don't get to choose," he went on. "Things just happen to me. I don't get to do anything heroic, or even particularly cruel. I get put in these situations and – against all the odds, and even against my will – I survive them."

"You say 'I get put in these situations' as though somebody's purposefully doing it to you," Lily snapped. "As though the universe is persecuting you."  

Severus opened his mouth to retort, and then stopped himself. If he explained to her that the world was persecuting him, she would only say he was being paranoid. She would always say it, even if he told her that he should never have been born in the first place. He should have died in the womb, a prenatal victim of his father's beatings. But his mother had drunk unicorn blood and bought him a cursed life – a half-life – a life full of humiliation and hopeless longing – and, for some reason he was currently unable to fathom, he was still struggling on with it.

"You've got to understand that that's not really happening, Sev," she went on pleadingly. "Nobody's out to get you. It just seems that way in your head."

Snape clenched his jaw. He was furious with her. Here he was, coated in his own blood, aching in every limb, covered with tangible evidence of the world's persecution, and she was psychoanalyzing him!

"I'm not the one who's crazy!" he shouted. "You think the voices in my head did this to me?"

He regretted this as soon as he'd said it, because she started to cry.

"Don't," he said wretchedly. "Don't do that. I hate it – I hate it when you do that."

He flushed miserably while she tried to get a hold of herself. "What are you crying for?" he mumbled, mainly to drown her out. "It's not your problem. It's not as if – I mean, we're not even friends any more, are we?"

"You're stupider than I thought," Lily snapped.

"It's 'more stupid'," he replied automatically. "And I think I've just proved you wrong."  

And she laughed. It was wonderful to see. She sniffed and spluttered, and her wet eyes crinkled, and tears dripped off her lashes like raindrops from a shaken tree.

On the same night the Dark Mark had chosen him as a worthy Death Eater – while it was still pulsing on his forearm – his heart was pounding at the sight of a small, red-haired school-girl smiling through her tears. He would never have guessed the world could be this way. He would never have guessed he could be capable of these extremes. About an hour ago, he'd had his hands clamped around MacNair's throat. Surely even the memory of that would make you immune to crying school-girls.

But apparently not. You could be a murderer one minute, and a blubbering ball of tenderness the next. It was strange. Maybe even the Dark Lord had these moments. Maybe he could comfortably plot the murder of half the world's population, but he went to pieces around kittens.

Lily sniffed again, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her robes.

"Listen," he said, with wretched tenderness. "You've got to understand. I live in a really… unpredictable universe, OK? Everyone in it is crazy. Everyone wants something from me. Usually, it's just my death, and I'm almost glad when I meet those kinds of people, because it's so much simpler -,"

"Sev…" she pleaded. "That isn't true. Or, anyway, it's not true all the time. You've been through some horrible things –,"

Snape glared at her. That sounded like pity.

" – and, obviously, you're angry. But you mustn't let the horrible people put you off the rest of the human race. There are still good people out there."

"Where are they?" he asked, more aggressively than he'd meant to. And, suddenly, the image of Potter loomed in front of his eyes. The thought that she might be trying to justify him, or people like him, was more than he could bear. The resolution to be gentle slipped away from him, and he fell headfirst into bitter, resentful ravings. "Potter and his cronies were out there tonight," he hissed, "trying to get me killed."

"But how could they have got out of the castle?"

"They're got their werewolf friend to help them, haven't they?"

"Sev, we've been through this," she started, in a weary voice.  

"Oh, I know," said Snape scathingly. "He's too polite."

Lily didn't reply and Severus, knowing it wouldn't do any good, but unable to help himself, went on.

"Dumbledore lets them do whatever they like, just because they're Gryffindors – just because they win trophies."

He was talking wildly. He knew he was losing her with every sentence. He knew because they'd had this conversation before, and the louder his voice got, the higher her eyebrows rose.

"They've been in the common room all night!" she protested. "Pettigrew was in here earlier, getting ice for Potter's elbow sprain."

"He's covering up for them," Snape spat contemptuously. "He's a lying little rat."

"Listen, he can be immature sometimes – and… well…"

"Cowardly?" Severus suggested. "Two-faced? Vicious? Sycophantic?"

"Everybody treats him like he's stupid!" Lily shouted. "So he gets nervous and defensive. But there's no harm in him."

Severus stared at her, feeling as though the ground was opening up beneath them. She was just as mad as the rest of them. She belonged to Dumbledore's world of whimsy. And all the understanding that had passed between them at one time or another didn't count for anything. She could see his point of view, the way she would sometimes come and sit next to him when they were playing Wizard's Chess, in an effort to see the board from his perspective – but she couldn't stay there; she always got up and went back to her seat in the end. It was just a holiday for her. Just a day-trip into somebody else's quaint and exotic world-view.

Even if there was a world of sanity that you could somehow get to, she could never live in it. How can you protect somebody who's that trusting? How can you keep her alive? It's like single-handedly trying to hold up the sky. She can't even see the harm in Peter Pettigrew!

"Please -," he said jerkily. "For once in your life, don't defend the idiots." He couldn't even look at her. He just stared resolutely at his bandaged hands, feeling the colour rise in his cheeks, and his tongue grow swollen and clumsy. "Tell me about someone with no hidden depths or redeeming features. Tell me about someone who couldn't possibly enrich your life if you got to know them better. Tell me about someone who could make the world a better place just by dropping down dead."

Lily hesitated. By some unspoken instinct, they both turned to look at Madam Pomfrey, who was struggling to breathe in a bed across the ward. Lily bit her lip. She looked as though she was trying to make up her mind about something. Severus wanted to say 'please' again, but it got stuck in his throat. So, instead, he just shrugged and muttered: "If you want to."

At length, she turned back to him, blinking under the weight of tear-spangled lashes.

"I could talk about how much I hate Bellatrix all day," she said, in a small voice.  

A slow, unwilling smile spread across his face, jarring the bruises, forcing the frown-lines to take up unfamiliar positions.

"Yeah?" he asked weakly.

"Yeah."

But she didn't talk about Bellatrix in the end. Perhaps she thought that would have been too dangerous. He wondered if she'd guessed that the Boggart-Lily had murdered Bellatrix. He wondered if she'd recognized those boots.

Bellatrix Black was Lily's version of James Potter's handprints – a thought that instantly unraveled all her composure and kindness. The emergency exit in any fit of abstraction. It cut through civilization and grabbed you by the throat. You may eat with a knife and fork – you may read books and talk about the rights of House Elves – but you have limits, just like everyone else.  

Instead, she talked about the first time she had met Andromeda Black. They'd been sitting together at the Gryffindor table when a money-spider had scuttled across the scorched wood-work. And Andromeda, without even breaking off her sentence, had squashed it. As though that was normal. She wiped her finger on her robes, and went on talking about Switching Spells, as though nothing had happened!    

And the time Sirius Black had said he didn't understand why the Beatles were so popular. And the time Pettigrew had laughed at Quirrell's stutter. No, she added, frowning – it was worse than that – he had looked around the room to see if anyone else was laughing at Quirrell's stutter – as though he needed approval even to be a git.

And, whenever she was voicing her opinions to Alice Mae – telling her that Azkaban was unconscionable, and House Elves should be given wages – Alice would give her a thin little smile and say: 'Well, I don't want to start an argument.'

"I mean, what does that mean?" Lily demanded. "'You're wrong but I'm too sweet and considerate to tell you so'?"

Snape shut his eyes and let these wonderful details wash over him. He wanted to laugh, or grab her by the shoulders and kiss her, but either of those courses of action would have stopped her talking. And it was imperative that she go on talking. He needed to hear this.   

Tiny little things; everyday acts of viciousness, that not even Lily – with her fervent desire to make excuses for people – could spin into courage or cuteness.

And he wanted to say: everything you are – everything that bugs you and delights you – I love it. It's so simple. It's so logical – for a given value of 'logical'.

There was no way to say it, of course. And that would matter, eventually. But not yet. He had years to work out strategies. He could develop some kind of sign-language. One eye-brow raise for 'I love you'. Two for 'You look beautiful tonight'. That kind of thing. She was Lily. She would understand.

Of course, he didn't want her to understand. He wanted her to be over-awed – delighted – swept off her feet – by him. He wanted her to be so impressed, she could hardly breathe. He wanted her whole romantic life to be the kind of story-book fairytale that other girls – simpler girls – the ones who weren't as clever as Lily – would dream of.  Because, even though he would have been the first to admit that the majority of people were idiots, he still wanted their respect. He still wanted them to be impressed by him.

It was a curious desire. As if the admiration of idiots could make you look clever! It cheapened you, if anything, but still, you pursued it. Because the idiots had the advantage of numbers; they had louder voices; they were the ones who tended to make a fuss and write letters to the newspapers. You pursued their good opinion until you realized, at long last, that you'd become just as stupid as they were. But, by then, it was too late.

"Why aren't you asleep yet?" she asked peevishly, peering at the empty goblet of Sleeping Draught she had given him, as though she suspected he'd only been pretending to drink it.  

Snape shrugged, and his shoulders twinged painfully. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe I am. Maybe we both are."

"Whose dream do you think this is?"

"Probably yours," he said – and resisted the urge to add: On account of the fact that we still have all our clothes on.

"Well, I've run out of material," she said, stifling a yawn.  

"Doesn't matter. It was -," he hesitated, "interesting."  

"Why do you want me to be mean about people?" she complained.

"You're not mean. They're mean. You're just noticing it."

She yawned again, and his smile faded instantly, because he remembered why she was so tired. He remembered that she was looking after Hagrid's game-keeping duties while he raised a baby Manticore in the Forbidden Forest. And she was effectively running the Hospital Wing these days. And she had NEWTs at the end of this year.  

He hauled her up onto the bed beside him and made her rest her head on his shoulder. After a while she made a feeble protest.

"You're too bony," she muttered, touching the exposed collar-bones on his shoulder. Severus shuddered with delight, but didn't let her see it.  

He summoned a pillow from one of the empty beds across the ward, and put it over his shoulder. Then she snuggled down. He heard her breathing become deep and regular.

When she seemed too far-gone to shout at him, he muttered. "I'm going to get Madam Pomfrey back tomorrow."

He wasn't sure whether she'd understood. She made a sound – but whether it conveyed disbelief, gratitude, or just the desire for him to be quiet, he had no idea.  

He listened to her breathing again, trying to locate the source of a feeling that had been nagging at him for a while now. It wasn't pain, and that was the first thing to make him suspicious. If things weren't painful, they were usually trying to trick you.

Right there – under all the aches and bruises – was a tiny, restless part of him that still stirred with desire. It swept through his body like the wind rippling calm waters. A glorious, slow shudder, that didn't leave a single inch of his body untouched. How ridiculous! Any kind of affection would have hurt at this moment. Even his lips ached. And she was asleep. And why couldn't his body realize these things? Why were all his needs so impractical? Why didn't he want the kind of girl he could easily get? An average-looking girl, with below-average intelligence?

He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He hadn't realized how dangerous happiness could be. It stopped you worrying about the things you badly needed to worry about. Everything was stacked against him. Everybody was mad at him. Everybody wanted to kill him – and the ones who didn't want to kill him wanted to kill his little Lily. Over the past few hours, his body had been racked with pain, guilt, jealousy and exhaustion – but all he could think about, right now, was how near she was – how warm she was.

He would hate himself for this stupidity if it all came to nothing. If it got her killed – or drove her into the arms of that slimy, grinning, Quidditch-playing creep. But it was hard to hate himself right now. He was hungrier than he was scared.  

He thought of the Boggart-Slytherin reading to Elizabeth Hartwell. Maybe he would position her on his lap and read to her in a booming voice, like an Old Testament prophet, until she fell asleep. Maybe, as she whimpered in her sleep, he would watch her – pore over her features lovingly, as though she was the best part of his favourite book. But, as soon as she opened her eyes, he had to frown and snarl and snap again. That misty-eyed look had to become a face of thunder. Or he would cease to exist.

Nobody else could have done it, he thought. Perhaps even Voldemort couldn't have done it. Keep someone close, but keep them terrified. It would have been a dream come true for Severus.

But it was impossible. Even his mother had learned to stop flinching at his father's punches – or was that because her face was permanently flinched these days? It was difficult to tell. She didn't fear him, though. She wanted him to be angry. As though the only way she could get revenge was by bruising his fist with her bony cheekbones.

Eventually, these agitated thoughts became dreams. He couldn't have said where the hand-over was, or when his unconscious mind had picked up the reins. He hadn't been controlling his thoughts very well to begin with. When he was tired, his inner monologue always spiraled downwards with unstoppable momentum. It didn't really matter whether he was conscious or not; he had no control over where his thoughts went in these moments.

But the dreams continued in the same vein. Spinner's End opened up before him. The same half-lit, dreary kitchen he'd known all his life, with its peeling wallpaper, puckered and stained with the damp.     

He was sitting, slumped, at the kitchen table, with rolled up shirt-sleeves, and his hand curled around a tumbler full of whisky. Lily was standing at the sink, doing the washing-up. Her nose was bleeding. Scarlet drops fell periodically into the soapy water, and dissolved.

And there was a child huddled up in the corner of the room, peering fearfully out from behind a curtain of jet-black hair.

Severus could feel a scream crawling up his throat, but it didn't have the strength to make it all the way. It broke out through his skin instead, in little prickly beads of sweat.

It took him a while to realize it, because the horror of the little child was overwhelming, but there was another figure in the kitchen, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, cradling her elbow in one hand. The others, intent on their domestic strife, were ignoring her completely. She looked awkward and sad, but also slightly bored, as though she had seen all this – and worse – a hundred times.

Severus woke with a start, his heart and head pounding simultaneously. The beads of sweat had been real enough; he was drenched and shivering. But what else had he carried with him? Was the child still hunched up in a corner somewhere, horribly exposed? Not even old enough to resent what was going on, just wishing, with its eyes shut fervently, for an end to all the shouting?  

As he lay there in the spinning darkness, fighting back nausea, he realized two things simultaneously. One was that he could now see Elsa Valance standing on the edges of his nightmares. And the other was that his marriage to the Boggart-Lily had been blessed with a child.

He tried to get his bearings in the darkness. It wasn't easy, with nausea blurring his vision, and an uncomfortable weight on his chest. But, little by little – like drips feeding into a pool of growing consciousness – he began to realize that the weight was warm, breathing regularly, and deliciously scented with gingerbread.

He was suspicious of these details for a long time – chiming in as they did with everything he currently wished for – but then recollection flooded back. It could be her, couldn't it? She'd been bandaging him up in the Hospital Wing. And, unless he was in a bakery, or lying next to a cauldron full of Amortentia, the gingerbread smell was difficult to explain away.

Severus shook her, somewhere between gently and frantically. He wanted to seem casual, but he was so desperate to hear her voice, and know that she was real.

She moaned into the pillow, and it flooded him with hot waves of relief.

Then she yawned and raised her head. It took her a little while to get to grips with where she was, but he was happy enough just feeling her stir in the darkness.

"Sorry, Sev," she mumbled at last. "I'm used to sleeping wherever I get the chance these days - ,"  

"I'm sorry about Madam Pomfrey, OK?" he interrupted, in a sweaty, aggressive rush.

There was a silence. He had expected scorn, derision or even tears of gratitude. But what he got was the single syllable: "Um…"

"What do you mean, um?" he demanded sharply.

"Well..." Lily faltered. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I've read about cases of belated delirium in patients who've been put under the Cruciatus Curse."

"Oh, for God's sake!" Severus collapsed against his pillows. Didn't she understand how hard that had been to say? And now she was putting it all down to delirium! "I'm fine!"

"You'd say that even if your head was hanging on by one thread, like Nearly Headless Nick's!" she protested.

"I don't think I'd be able to," he pointed out logically. "I'd need vocal cords that were still attached."

Lily struggled to unwind herself from the sheets and pillows on the bed. "Well, I'll be perfectly happy to accept your apology if you'll let me give you something to bring down your fever."

"I haven't got a fever," he replied irritably. "And I don't care whether you accept my apology or not."

Lily felt his clammy forehead, tutted several times, and muttered an exasperated "Lumos!"

Light splintered the Hospital Wing, making his head spin faster.

"Here," she said, thrusting a bottle towards him. "This will help you get some sleep." She took one look at his panicky face and added: "Dreamless sleep."

"I told you I'd get her back, didn't I?" he went on, as soon as he could work out which of the spinning objects in the room was her.  

"Yes, you did. How are you planning to do that?"

"Doesn't matter how. I'll do it."

Lily put a hand to his cheek. He shrugged away automatically, but he was in no condition to avoid her caresses. Her hands followed him, settling themselves on his forehead. They were deliciously cool. In that moment, they felt like the only things anchoring him to reality.  

"Thank you, Severus."

"I haven't done it yet," he mumbled.

She gave him a sullen shrug, still holding her hands to his forehead. "Thank you for trying," she said.
Continuing from 'The Cavalry Again' [link]
This chapter is dedicated to my dear friend Inge, who has recently suffered a loss. I hope it helps to cheer you up! :hug:
© 2010 - 2024 ls269
Comments21
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
polkadotpeony's avatar
Ahhhh... I loved this chapter, the interactions between Sev and Lily are perfect. I really loved he finally apologized, I mean actually said the words "I'm sorry" that is HUGE. I think it is such a big step for him to make. It really says a lot about the journey they are on, and I feel just as much hope as Sev does that they might actually make this work. I am a pragmatist like Severus but I can't help but have hope for these two.

"Whose dream do you think this is?"

"Probably yours," he said – and resisted the urge to add: On account of the fact that we still have all our clothes on.

Favorite line. Ah Sev, how I love thee. :)