Severus Saves

Phoenix Song, Chapter Twelve : Severus Saves

DISCLAIMER : The characters and many of the situations described in this story are the property of the incomparable J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this story, which exists as a work of tribute.

I'd like to thank both my betas: LAxo and WriterMerrin, without whom this chapter would be incorrectly commaed and, in some places, incomprehensible. They have, as always, my very great thanks.

Severus did not know what Granger had said to Jocelyn, but he knew that it had helped. When he and Jocelyn met next, after breakfast on Saturday, he managed...for one brief moment...to move beyond her shields.

The session started as each of their previous attempts had: they sat down facing each other away from the desk, made skin contact...one palm against another...and Jocelyn closed her eyes to focus on a happy or neutral memory, a memory that she could imagine sharing. When she was ready, she opened her eyes and looked into his. Yet this time, her shields were down, and he passed through into her memories. The instant he crossed the border of her mind, however, her instincts kicked in and summarily ejected him.

Severus regarded the girl in front of him: she looked astonished. He allowed one corner of his mouth to curl upwards. "Not bad," he remarked.

Jocelyn sat slightly straighter in her seat. Though she didn't smile, her eyes widened momentarily.

"Shall we try again?" he inquired. Jocelyn nodded vigorously in reply.

Yet twenty minutes later, despite several attempts, they were unable to re-create the experience. Severus felt his own frustration building, and Jocelyn looked increasingly distressed. They were a week into their allotted time. If their treatment failed and an official report of her condition was made to St. Mungo's, Jocelyn would be certified as dangerous and almost certainly admitted to the Spell Damage Ward.

"Enough," he said eventually, running one hand down his face. "Did you notice any difference between how you felt the first time and our other attempts?"

Jocelyn creased her brow in the effort of accurately categorising the sensations. "I was more . . . relaxed on the first try."

Relaxed . . . Hmm. All the literature Severus had read on the cure for blocking had stressed the importance of soothing voices, friendly gestures and safe environments. Thankfully, his perceptive little Slytherin wasn't put off by his abrasive personality, and he'd jettisoned the accepted wisdom without a second thought. Relaxed, however, he would have to think about.

"The second time, I nearly did it; but then after that, I..." her voice faltered for a second before she continued, "I got scared."

"What were you scared of?"

Jocelyn ran the nail of one thumb along the arm of her chair, watching its careful progress rather than meeting his eye. It was several minutes before she spoke.

"Scared that once you see the things that happened, you won't like me any more."

The brief pause before Severus spoke was thick and heavy with the young girl's anxiety. "Jocelyn," he said, urgently, "let's try this another way. Get out your wand."

Jocelyn pulled out her wand with some reluctance. "Why bother? It doesn't work."

"Give me your hand. Put the tip of your wand here, on my temple."

Her small hand slid to rest on his much larger palm, and her wand bumped lightly against his eyebrow before skidding across to the spot he'd indicated. "What are we doing?" she asked.

"I want to show you one of my memories," he explained. "Technically, it's magic, but Legilimency is so close to the Occlumency you're already doing that it just might work. Besides," he added, noting the interested gleam in her eye, "your inherent curiosity might serve to propel you out of your safety zone."

"What do I have to do?" Her voice was more excited than he'd ever heard it.

"The spell is Legilimens, but more importantly, you want to look deeply enough into my eyes to focus on the inside of my head. You have to think your way into my mind. Do you understand?"

She nodded, muttering the sounds of the spell to herself a few times.

"Are you ready?"

There was a determined look on her face and a fierce quality to her gaze. She breathed in sharply through her nose, and for a few seconds she held her breath, her body poised. Then, in her clear, high voice, she cast the spell, "Legilimens!"

Power surged through her wand, and her consciousness tumbled forward into Severus' mind. He'd chosen the memory almost at random; there were so many that would have sufficed. The room that met their minds' eyes was a dingy kitchen. Beige surfaces that might have looked merely conservative in the '50s spoke of outright poverty a decade later. A boy of eight or nine sat at a battered laminate table, eating a bowl of cereal in a desultory fashion. The spoon was held rather awkwardly in one hand, and his elbows were propped on the table. Both his clothing and his hair were in need of a wash. Behind the counter, a woman was frying bacon; her dressing gown was liberally spotted with greasy marks. The resemblance between the two was too strong to be co-incidental: they had the same dark, lank hair, the same too-pale skin. The screen door creaked open, then slammed shut with a bang that caused mother and son to flinch. The contents of the boy's spoon splashed out onto the tabletop. He froze.

"Jesus H. Christ," swore the man who had just entered. He reached out and grabbed roughly at the boy's collar, half pulling him from the chair and pressing his prominent nose into the small puddle of milk on the table's surface. "The little freak can't even eat his breakfast without making a mess."

In the background the woman scrambled to serve up the bacon and eggs. She scurried around the bench and clumsily clattered the plate into place. "Toby," she gasped. "Breakfast!" Her voice was high-pitched with anxiety as she sought to distract her husband. "How was the night shift? Did you speak to..."

Her babbling was abruptly silenced when Toby, without letting go of the boy's collar, reached out one long arm and smacked her sharply on the back of the head.

"Woman," he snarled, "don't interrupt me when I'm disciplining the boy." With his free hand, he undid his buckle and pulled his belt from his trousers. They slipped an inch or so lower on his hips, and he widened his stance in order to keep them up. He kicked the boy's chair out from under him, holding his face pressed to the table the entire time.

The boy was trembling, his eyes squeezed closed. As the man, Toby, began to lay into his back and upper thighs with the leather of his belt, the boy began to cry.

"Enough," said Severus a few moments later, not ungently, as he severed the connection between Jocelyn and his memories. His office came back into focus, and he regarded the girl before him with interest. She'd done magic...a serious breach of the blocking...but he wasn't sure what might happen next. Indeed, her body swayed, teetering on the edge of her chair.

"Oh," she sighed. "You . . ." She broke off and stared at her wand. "I . . ." With a choked noise she launched herself towards him, wrapping her skinny arms tightly around his neck. Automatically, Severus' arms closed around her and he twisted her tiny frame just enough that he could lift her onto his lap. Over fifteen years as Head of Slytherin house had exposed him to more than his fair share of crying children, and he waited patiently for her to finish. It took several minutes for her sobs to quieten, long enough for several tears to trickle uncomfortably down the collar of his robes. Once she was done, he placed her back on her own chair and wordlessly passed her a handkerchief. She took it with a small sniff, blowing her nose loudly and thoroughly before offering back the scrunched and dirty piece of cloth.

Severus eyed the girl and the handkerchief with a look of distaste. Before accepting the return of his property, he extended his wand and performed a thorough cleaning charm. Jocelyn watched the performance carefully, her eyes flickering back and forth from his wand to her own. The excitement emanating from her body was palpable, and with a frisson of shock, Severus realised that he could feel her mental excitement as well: her shields were down. Shooting him a quick glance from under her eyelashes, Jocelyn pointed her wand at the newly-clean handkerchief, a look of determination on her pale face.

"Wingardium Leviosa," she exclaimed, levitating the handkerchief into the air. With a cry of delight, she sent it fluttering around the room.

Severus rose and moved towards his desk. A thread of relief unravelled up through his body, loosening some of the hard knots clenched in his belly. Jocelyn was up out of her own seat, capering around the furniture as she navigated the handkerchief in a second victory lap of his office. The smile on her face transformed her appearance: the sharpness of her features softened and her pale cheeks glowed. As the handkerchief tumbled past his head, Severus plucked it nimbly from the air, tucking it back into his pocket where he felt it wriggle once before falling still.

"Sit down," he commanded, pointing at the chair.

Jocelyn sat immediately, smothering a giggle.

"When you leave here, you are to report to Madam Pomfrey. Have her do a full examination."

"Yes, sir." After speaking, she pressed her lips tightly closed, but Severus could see the unasked question tugging at the corners of her mouth and vibrating in the set of her shoulders. What an extraordinary change. The silent, abnormally still child he had learned to recognise as Jocelyn Smith was gone. The girl in her place was brimming with energy.

"While there is no longer a need for us to meet every day, I suggest we meet once a week to continue working on your Occlumency skills. Ideally, you need to have them firmly under your conscious control. Do I make myself clear?"

She nodded her assent.

"You may go," he said with a dismissive flick of his fingers. Jocelyn slid obediently from her chair and moved towards the door. "Miss Smith," he called at the last minute, and she looked back over her shoulder, one hand on the doorknob. "If I find you doing magic in the halls, I will deduct house points."

Her answering smile stayed with him, even once she'd left.

Alone in his office Severus allowed himself an unapologetic smirk of satisfaction at his unorthodox, yet highly satisfactory, solution to Jocelyn's problem. He would have to write to the mediwizards at Harvard who had developed the original treatment; no doubt they'd be interested in hearing of her success.

How long, he wondered, will her first flush of happiness last? Not permanently. That much he knew from his reading. But for a while, the rush of magic and the pleasure of having entered into a new world far removed from the misery of her previous existence would allow Jocelyn to live happily...perhaps for the first time. At some stage, of course, she would have to deal with the memories of her previous life and find some way to incorporate them into her sense of self. The best, perhaps only, thing he could do for her was to continue the Occlumency lessons.

The thought of lessons brought his wandering mind back to the present with an unwelcome jolt. Finding the time to meet daily with Jocelyn had thrown his grading schedule out completely, leaving him with essays to mark for five year-levels of students. With a sigh, he pulled the closest two piles towards him and deliberated over his choice: start with the simpler, shorter and infinitely more boring first-year papers, or wade his way through the longer, more complex NEWT papers. NEWT, he decided, leaving the easier papers for later when concentration will be more difficult.

By the time he had written a large "P" on the fourth consecutive paper, Severus dropped the pretence of not caring about Granger's essay and fished around among the scrolls beside him until he found it. Unfurling the parchment, he noted the eleven extra inches she'd added with a vicious sneer of anticipation. This, he noted, deserves a new pot of red ink. An hour and fifteen minutes later, he punctuated a final scathing comment with an authoritative full stop and regarded his handiwork with a smug expression. "E," he wrote clearly at the bottom of the scroll. Scattered around his desk were half a dozen books he'd pulled out to check her references or point to something she'd missed. He'd taken a particular pleasure in informing her that one of the future avenues of research she had hypothesised had, in fact, been solved over a decade ago...referencing an unpublished paper that he held in his private collection.

Severus leant back in his chair and tapped one finger against Granger's essay, smirking like the cat with the proverbial cream. The margins were thick with his scrawl, the red of the ink framing her neat script like a decorative border. He'd savagely dismantled each of her assumptions, berated her for several structural decisions, and a single misplaced apostrophe had triggered an entire paragraph on the topic of her grammatical inadequacies.

Over the last five and a bit years, the back-and-forth of their academic engagement had escalated to its current...epic...proportions. He knew the kind of effort she put into her work, acknowledging it, in his own fashion, in the depth and quantity of his critical response. Unlike her classmates, Granger alone took his comments to heart, subtly changing her writing style and chasing down the obscure references he mentioned. For a long time, her precocity had merely irritated him...an irritation that grew larger each year. In the classroom she was nigh on impossible: the alacrity with which she answered each and every question ensured that none of the other students bothered to think anything through for themselves, and the questions she asked invariably required a response so far ahead of the learning curve that the other students would switch off entirely. Initially, the pitched battleground of her essay margins had been an attempt at discipline, an effort aimed at humiliating her into an awareness of her own ignorance and thus ensure her silence during classes. As such, it hadn't been particularly successful. Granger took each criticism on board, redoubling her efforts and rising to each challenge.

Last year, it had infuriated him. He had imagined her hoping to catch him out, or revelling in the knowledge that she was wasting his time. But this year, their interaction had changed entirely. Not that the change could be measured by a noticeable difference in the tone of his comments...they were as acerbic as ever. But his sojourn inside her memories had forced a reconsideration of her motivations, and that, in turn, had necessitated a re-evaluation of his own.

Thus Severus admitted, if only to himself, that marking Granger's papers was one of the singular joys of his week. As were their private lessons. Liberated from the intellectual inertia of the classroom environment, Granger skipped through material and ideas at an exhilarating pace. Removed from the contextual framework of a syllabus she'd long ago committed to heart, Granger was less of a know-it-all and more of the inquisitive, intuitive scholar she was destined to become. Shutting her thoughts up in the library books, he mused, was an ingenious move. This week I'll start her on Legilimency. Severus had no desire to let anyone root around inside his memories, but since he could...to a degree...control the access of both Dumbledore and the Dark Lord, he was relatively unconcerned about a sixth-year Hogwarts student, no matter how advanced she might be. Perhaps once she catches on, I can set her practising with Jocelyn.

The thought of both students in the same breath caught on a jagged edge somewhere between his sternum and his navel. What did Granger say to Jocelyn yesterday? Until the last minute, he hadn't realised that his presence might make things more difficult for Granger; indeed, he hadn't realised that he himself couldn't bear to listen to Granger's account of events. What if her version had differed substantially from his? What if their interaction had meant nothing to her?

In vain he'd attempted to justify to himself the strength of his reaction to the events in the Hospital Wing last year. True: it was gratifying to be treated with such respect. True: the willingness with which Albus had contemplated sacrificing Granger's life had ejected her sharply from the neat box marked "Favoured Gryffindor, needs taking down a peg" into which he'd previously filed her. True: her delusional identification of him as a phoenix...a phoenix...hit unerringly on the craven desire of his darkest nights. He'd right royally fucked up this life; what wouldn't he give to burn up into a crisp and start anew? Yet still, still, Granger...Still Granger takes up far too much of my attention, he interrupted himself with a sigh, pulling Draco Malfoy's paper before him. Attention that would be better placed elsewhere.

Saturday afternoon, one week later, found Severus in a very similar position: grading papers, although in this instance it was the third-year DADA student earning the fruits of his invective. "Ensure you actually have a point before bothering to belabour one," he wrote into the margin. Pausing for a moment to consider the monstrosity before him, he stroked the feathered end of his quill across his pursed lips. "T," he decided at last, dipping his pen deeply into the red ink. When his fire flared a brilliant green, he paused, and a single drop of ink dripped onto the surface of the paper.

"Snape!" The voice was Hagrid's. He'd managed to fit only the top of his head into the fireplace; it made for a rather muffled line of communication but the panic in his voice came through clearly nonetheless. "Come quick!" he added before disappearing abruptly.

Severus let out a hiss of irritation. As if being summoned by a grammatically incorrect idiot was insufficient, the fool forgot to tell me where to go. Luckily, in less time than it took for Snape to rise, vanish the ink spot, and move towards the hearth, the fire flared green once again and Minerva's head appeared.

"Ah, Minerva," he drawled, "what a pleasant surprise."

"Severus, this is no time for flippant comments...a student has been badly cursed. You're needed in the Hospital Wing immediately." Not waiting for his reply, she too disappeared.

Within seconds, Severus had summoned his medicinal bag and stepped through the fireplace, unfolding his long body into Poppy's office with a nonchalance that belied the speed with which he'd moved. Hagrid was there waiting for him and grabbed hold of his shoulder.

"Wha' kept you?" he asked, stepping towards the doorway into the ward with such speed that Severus had to take several hurried steps to avoid falling.

"Hagrid," he hissed, "unhand me!" Hagrid paused momentarily and looked down at the furious face of Severus Snape with a slightly bemused expression.

"Right you are, Professor," he offered, in the voice of one who doesn't quite know what they've done wrong, patting good naturedly the shoulder he'd just been gripping. Severus sighed and stepped away with an awkward jerk of his head. Being rude to Hagrid was like kicking a dog.

Freed from the grip of his overenthusiastic colleague, Severus stepped through into the ward. His eyes swept the empty beds, and without hesitation he walked towards the one curtained-off area close to the exit. Parting the curtains, he also breached the Silencing Charm Poppy had put in place, and the sounds of Katie Bell's screams assaulted his ears. The poor girl was writhing on the bed while Poppy tried ineffectually to calm her down.

"Thank Merlin," exclaimed Poppy at the sight of him, stepping back immediately to let him closer.

"Diagnostics?"

"Nothing I recognised. Apparently, she touched something, some kind of cursed object."

Severus had his wand out and waved it over the convulsing body of his student. Dark, smoky shapes formed above her body, twisting through several runic shapes before dissipating.

"She touched it?" he asked, in confirmation. "With her hand?"

"I don't know."

Bell was still dressed for the miserable weather, complete with hat, cloak and gloves. A scarf that presumably completed the ensemble lay on the bedside table; in her present state it would have posed a strangulation danger. Her arms were thrashing wildly, and Severus had to resort to a charm to remove her gloves. As soon as he did so, the point of contact was apparent: the skin on one finger had bubbled alarmingly. By dint of catching at her wrist and pressing it to the mattress, he was able to take a closer look, though her hand still twitched violently. Poppy stepped up beside him and bent her grey head alongside his dark one.

"Severus..." she began, her tone worried.

"Until I see the cursed object," he interrupted her, "there is nothing more that I can do."

During the next few minutes, Poppy paced, wringing her hands as she walked. Doing nothing clearly sat poorly with the mediwitch. Severus conjured a chair and sat watching Katie Bell's disturbingly contorted body. One of his narrow legs lay crossed over the other, his hands steepled together and his forefingers pressed against his lips. His stillness contrasted sharply with Bell's continuously jerky movements. Mercifully, it was only a short time before Filch arrived, a bundled Gryffindor scarf held awkwardly out from his body.

Severus gestured towards the dresser as he rose to his feet. Filch put down the package gingerly, jumping back as soon as humanly possible. Carrying something so dangerous had made him twitchy.

"Very good, Professor, sir," wheezed Filch. He tended towards the ingratiating with Snape. "I'll be off now."

Severus dismissed him without a second glance, directing his full attention towards the bundle Filch had left behind. With his wand, he banished the scarf to a nearby chair, revealing a chunky opal necklace, over which he performed a series of complicated gestures. Once again, smoky shapes formed near the tip of his wand, shifting and turning in the still air of the Hospital Ward, spelling out information in an arcane runic script. Severus muttered to himself, stringing the runes together and formulating conclusions. When he turned back towards Poppy and Katie Bell, there was a grim look on his face.

"Severus?" Poppy was apprehensive. When the necklace had shown up, her pacing had stopped, and she stood poised, ready to receive instructions.

"I can't fix it, but I might be able to stabilise her long enough to get her to St. Mungo's. We can't move her in her current state. Poppy, pay attention,"...he listed off a series of potions..."anything you don't have, you'll have to get Slughorn to make. I'm going to be busy here."

Poppy graced him with a tight smile and spun on her heel. She moved towards the medicinal supplies with much of her usual control restored. Armed with a specific task to do, she was immediately calmer. Severus turned towards the bed and took a deep preparatory breath. It was going to be a long night.

The rosy-hued streaks of dawn were colouring the sky by the time Severus made his way from the Hospital Wing. Exhaustion had deepened the lines on his face, and his voice was hoarse and sore. Katie Bell, however, had stabilised. Severus had managed to sing parts of the curse from her body entirely, though much remained and the girl herself had entered a coma. It would take the combined efforts of a professional curse-breaker and a team of mediwitches and -wizards to do more.

As he walked, the clink of Severus' boot heels rang out eerily. Enough light was coming though the windows that the torches had been extinguished, although it wasn't yet strong enough to do more than variegate the scene into complementary shades of grey. At a large corner window, Severus paused and stood for a moment, staring out into the grounds. The lake lay below him like a dark puddle, and the trees of the Forbidden Forest stood out in silhouette against the horizon. Severus rested his forehead against the cool glass and thought longingly of his bed. At least today is a Sunday, he reflected. With a deep breath, he turned away and pressed onwards: Dumbledore is always the last hurdle before bed.

When Severus reached the headmaster's office, Dumbledore was alone. Severus had more than half expected to find Minerva there, sharing the vigil and keeping Albus company with a strict alternation of tea and firewhiskey. Indeed, a quick count of the dirty glasses suggested that both she and Hooch had been and gone. He wondered idly how long he'd missed them by and how much later he would have to stay as a result. Had the others been there, he could have reported on Bell's health and beaten a speedy retreat.

"My dear boy, good morning." Albus, it seemed, had been poring over some of Vector's calculations, but he tucked them away at Severus' appearance.

"Albus." Severus lowered his long body into the chair opposite Dumbledore's desk, stretching out his legs and revelling in the sensation of sitting after so long on his feet.

"How is the patient?"

Severus shrugged. "At this point, it's out of my hands."

"I hear from Poppy that this is the second student's life you've saved this week." Dumbledore leaned forward slightly, delivering the phrase as both commendation and interrogation.

Wariness cut through the tired cocoon of Severus' thoughts. "Poppy exaggerates. I dealt with the matter as Head of Slytherin House; there is little more to be said."

Dumbledore sighed. "A Slytherin?" he echoed. Severus knew it for a rhetorical question and said nothing. Dumbledore made something of a show of shaking out his sleeve over the blackened mess of his arm. "What happened, Severus?" he asked at last, grandfatherly concern radiating from his face.

With his elbows on the arms of his chair, Severus rested the tips of his fingers together lightly. In reply, he quirked one eyebrow and let his face fall into an expression of polite incomprehension.

"Severus, if one of our students is in danger, I expect to hear about it. Regardless of which house they belong to."

"I suggest you speak with Poppy Pomfrey, Albus. She is far more qualified to give you the information you desire."

Severus noted the twitch of Dumbledore's mouth as the headmaster fought to keep his irritation submerged below the surface of congeniality. "Right now, however, I'm asking you. Keeping secrets from me is not part of your job description."

Has it come to this? "Am I to understand, Albus, that my loyalty to you is in doubt?"

"No! Severus, of course not. I trust you...with my life." It was a poor joke and it fell flat. "On the contrary, I'm concerned that you don't trust me."

Severus examined the nails of his right hand before replying. "I have said it before, Albus: some of the students mean more to you than others."

Dumbledore reached for his whiskey glass, his blackened hand trembling slightly. As a performance of injured pride, his comportment was masterful. Severus restrained an urge to roll his eyes. Closing his eyes briefly, he felt his exhaustion wash over him. Better to end this quickly.

"Her name," sighed Severus, noting the attentive look in Dumbledore's eyes and bracing himself for a subsequent lecture on endangering the larger student population, "is Jocelyn Smith. She is in the first year. She was blocking, and I fixed it."

The consequences of his words were much more dramatic and far less confrontational than he'd expected. Dumbledore's face crumbled in on itself, and his uninjured hand flew to his lips in an almost comical expression of surprise. "Blocking?" His voice was little louder than a whisper.

Severus drew his brows together with concern. "Albus?" he queried. When Dumbledore made no response except to wave one hand vaguely in the air, Severus repeated his name, more sharply.

"I . . . oh . . . you fixed it?" Dumbledore's voice was uncertain and incredulous.

Surreptitiously, Severus eased his wand out of his sleeve and into his hand, keeping his wrist below the desk and out of Dumbledore's line of vision. "Yes," he replied. "New research from Harvard showed promise using Occlumency skills." Dumbledore's reaction worried him.

"How very interesting." Visibly, Dumbledore shook himself, and Severus watched the old man's defences rebuild hurriedly...he sat straighter, adjusted his glasses and switched on the grandfatherly charm once more. Unexpectedly, he changed topic. "No luck with the Malfoy boy, then?"

"No." Severus narrowed his eyes at the headmaster. Something isn't right. "Despite my best efforts, Draco continues to avoid me: I cannot force his confidences."

"Oh well," replied Dumbledore, his manner slightly too offhand. "Hopefully you'll have some success before he makes another such clumsy attempt."

Severus tilted his head deferentially, but kept his eyes on the man before him.

"You must get some rest, Severus, We'll talk more later." Unmistakably, the conversation was at an end.

Despite the late hour, Severus waved away the offer of Floo powder. The headmaster's strange behaviour had left him with a lot to think about, and he set off through the now-luminous corridors, turning the sequence of events over in his mind.

A/N : I know I'm not the first fanfiction author to compare being rude to Hagrid to kicking a dog...it remains terribly appropriate, if a little clichéd.