Mischief Managed

Disclaimer: JKR wrote it and owns it and makes it brush its teeth at night.

* * * * * * * * * *

For several days Severus mostly drifted in a drugged sleep.

On his fifth morning in the hospital wing, he lay with his eyes closed. He was horribly thirsty, but was trying to feign sleep until Poppy finished bustling and left the room. Finally, groaning, he reached out for the glass on his bedside table and drained it, then sank back into his pillows.

'Oh, Severus, there you are. How are you feeling this morning?' Poppy knew better than to simper at him much, but the question still annoyed him.

'Yes. Here I am,' he rasped. 'And I feel like a man whose liver is half functioning and who has been sedated as though he were a mad elephant. For days.' He closed his eyes. 'How many days?'

'Five and a half,' she said, and held up her hand to forestall his reply. 'You need real rest as much as you need medicine,' she proclaimed. 'Allowing the body to heal itself is nearly always our best practice. Potions and spells can easily be miscalibrated, and even the most subtle, skilfully applied ones are crude approximations at best of the nuance and power of our own capacity to heal ourselves.'

Sententious biddy, he thought. She rounded the foot of the bed and approached his side.

He lifted his hand to gesture at one of two bottles in her hand. 'If that's what I think it is, keep it away from me. Let me sleep when sleep comes.'

She set the bottles down beside his water glass and pulled out her wand. 'I'll be the judge of that, Severus. You are not qualified to diagnose and treat yourself...no, no, hush!' She shook her finger at him. 'Save your breath and let me work.'

She folded down the sheet before scanning his body with hand and wand, murmuring low, questing incantations over his leg, solar plexus, heart, neck, and face.

At last she stood back and smiled. 'A vast improvement since yesterday. Your liver function is much stronger. You must be able to feel it.'

He could. He was far from well, but he no longer felt vitally stricken. The pain in his abdomen had eased, changing from a constant nauseating agony to a diffused dull ache, with occasional spikes of real pain.

However, this meant that the sting and itch of the cut on his face and the grinding ache of his mended tibia were more noticeable, as were the complaints of a body that had been immobile for too long. Have to get out of this bed, no more of that sedative... he was drifting off again, damn it. Of course; she was putting it in his water. 'No more!' he protested once again, fighting to stay awake.

She knew what he meant, and told him what he wanted to hear before sleep took him again: 'Yes, Severus. No more sedative. Next time you wake up, you can stay awake.'

She collected the glass from his table and pocketed the bottle of sedative. Before she left the room, she pulled back the thick curtain over the small window to let some wintry light in.

Hermione Granger was sitting in her office waiting for her.

'Good morning, Miss Granger,' said Poppy. 'Come with a delivery?'

The girl nodded and indicated a bottle on the desk beside her, which was nearly full of a viscous brick-red liquid. 'It's been cooling overnight and is ready to use.'

'Excellent.' Poppy nodded with satisfaction. Once she had used all the Iecur Fortis potion in Severus's stores, Horace had started brewing more. Slughorn's version wasn't as refined as Snape's and didn't last as long, but it was doing the job.

The girl...who, as Poppy understood it, Professor Dumbledore had roped in to help carry Snape's workload...had come to the hospital wing once a day to deliver the day's potions from Professor Slughorn, who loathed walking up more stairs than he positively had to. She never stayed long, and she never asked to see the patient, though she usually inquired how he was doing...she did so now.

'Professor Snape is awake, or will be in a few hours. Then I expect the battle will begin to keep him mostly to his bed while he recovers a bit further.' Poppy had known Severus long enough to predict the sort of patient he would be when conscious...prickly and, if compliant, only begrudgingly so.

'How long before he recovers?' asked Hermione.

Poppy shook her head as she took a seat behind her desk. 'That's one of the wickedest things about the Prometheus Curse. The worst of the original damage can be mended, but as you might expect from the name of the curse, its effects renew themselves daily and need to be managed. It can only be eradicated by the wizard who cast the original spell. Professor Snape will be dependent upon this potion,' she gestured at the bottle, 'until... well, until You-Know-Who decides otherwise.'

Hermione had known all this for days, being quite capable of research. She rephrased her question. 'But how long until he feels well again, even if he still depends upon the potion?'

'Oh, perhaps two weeks or so. If he rests. He will need to guard his health and strength.' Poppy reached for the dark red potion and absently passed the bottle back and forth between her hands. 'He should be fit to teach by the beginning of next term,' she said, half-forgetting who she was talking to, 'if he can be persuaded not to pretend he's superhuman.'

'I do get the sense from Professor Dumbledore that that'll be an issue,' Hermione said earnestly. 'That Professor Snape would much prefer to do everything himself, to his own standards.' She made a wry face. 'I can understand the feeling. But,' she added, 'Professor Dumbledore says Professor Snape will simply have to change his ways, at least for a little while.'

Poppy looked sharply at the girl. I'll just say it, she decided. 'Miss Granger, I must tell you I was concerned and...well, let's just say concerned...when Professor Dumbledore made you privy to details of Professor Snape's condition, and enlisted your help to such a substantial degree. He has heard my thoughts on the matter; so has Professor McGonagall as your Head of House. Now I want to tell you something I don't believe you are hearing elsewhere: you can say no to the Headmaster.'

Hermione opened her mouth, but Poppy cut her off. 'No, no, my dear. Hear me out.

'I think I understand your desire to please Professor Dumbledore with your competence, but he is asking you to take on the sorts of responsibilities that are more suited to an adult witch or wizard. You have your own schoolwork and friends and so forth.' She waved her hands about to indicate Hermione's full life. 'The wellbeing of the staff is Professor Dumbledore's responsibility, and mine. It is not yours, my dear. You needn't take it on.'

Hermione, whose complexion had changed shade more than once during Madam Pomfrey's speech, bowed her head and considered her hands, which were folded in her lap.

'Madam Pomfrey,' she said at last, 'this is something that's easy for me to do. I am always helping my friends with their... work.' She suppressed a smile at the thought of the larcenous, trespassing, rule-breaking forms her friends' 'work' sometimes took.

'Professor Sn... I mean, my teachers, are not my friends,' Hermione continued, red-faced now. 'But we are on the same side. Sometimes'...she searched for words...'bad things happen and even students have to fight back. I want to help Professor Snape. It's important. I don't want You Know Who to win.'

Poppy looked at Hermione a little sadly. 'Of course you don't, dear girl. None of us does, I'm sure. But it pains me to see the burdens you children are under in these times. I just wanted you to hear that there is no dishonour in simply being a young person with a young person's concerns and without the weight of the world upon you.'

There was a longish moment of silence, broken at last by the girl. 'Thank you, Madam Pomfrey. You are really... very kind.'

She rose from her chair, then paused for a moment in thought. 'It's just occurred to me that I have something that may help Professor Snape over the next couple of weeks. I'll bring it up at lunchtime, if I may.'

'Certainly, my dear.' Poppy had resumed her usual crisp demeanour. 'I will see you then.'

* * *

But when Hermione returned to the hospital wing during the lunch hour, Madam Pomfrey was nowhere to be found.

After waiting in the healer's office for five minutes, Hermione succumbed to temptation. She couldn't leave something so valuable lying out in the open. Safer just to... deliver it to his bedside and let him discover it next time he woke up. Yes. That would be best.

It was the flimsiest of excuses. But she had been so good. So circumspect. She had absolutely longed to see him for days. She had scarcely gone five minutes at a stretch without wondering how he was. She treasured up the few morsels of news Madam Pomfrey and Professor Dumbledore passed along to her each day, as she feigned a much milder interest in the subject than she felt.

Befriending Severus Snape (which she was quite determined to do, ideally without his really noticing) was rather tricky. One could not take a direct approach.

She had of course thrown herself into marking DADA papers (she now worked in Professor McGonagall's office, or in Professor Slughorn's, for privacy) and was up to date with those.

In the last two days she had also helped Professor Slughorn brew and bottle the Iecur Fortis potion. It was fascinating. The brewing itself was not so complicated, but the purifying process was incredibly difficult, picky work. Hermione could turn out a passable version of the potion, but with practice, she knew she could learn to extend its effectiveness for hours, even days.

Caption: Hermione's notes (in blue) on a copy of Severus's Iecur Fortis potion recipe. Illustration by Hechicera.

And she now held in her hand the instrument of her latest scheme to help Snape. She was a little afraid she'd come across as overeager with this particular plan, but it was too good an idea to ignore.

She had spent the last half an hour in her dormitory adjusting the contents of her M-Clip to suit him...no, to delight him. And heal him. That was what she wanted to do.

She stripped out the pop, rock, and folk music that she just couldn't see him enduring, and filled the M-Clip's memory up with Mozart and more Mozart, all the Beethoven she had, Bach, Telemann, Handel, Mahler, Brahms, Lizst and Chopin. Rigoletto. Strauss songs, so pretty. Some early music...Machaut and Josquin and Dowland. The little scraps of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington could stay, she decided. Her mother liked jazz; Severus might too...who knew?

She had written out instructions for using the device and spelled the play list onto a sheet of parchment, which she then Transfigured into a small square book with a black leather cover.

Now she was standing outside his door clutching both book and M-Clip box. Before her courage deserted her, she knocked softly. No sound came from within. She turned the knob and stepped in, then carefully, soundlessly, closed the door.

The window curtains were pulled back and a meagre amount of greyish light filtered in. Severus's eyes were closed, his head turned away from the window. One long hand lay by his side; the other rested his chest, which rose and fell smoothly and steadily.

His colour was much better, and the horrid gash across his face was well on its way to disappearing. She marvelled at the speed and efficacy of magical healing methods. In the Muggle world, that cut would have made a permanent, disfiguring scar.

Hermione set her offering on the bedside table, then just stood by the bed gazing at him. She drank in the quiet lines of his mouth, the strong dark shapes of his brows, the fine-grained skin of his eyelids, and the curve of his thick black lashes. Lovely. Lovely. A stray lock of hair lay across his cheek, its tips just touching the edge of his upper lip. Entranced, she reached out to lift it gently away from his face.

She didn't even see his hand move, but suddenly it was wrapped around her wrist, imprisoning her own in midair. Severus's black eyes snapped open and locked with hers.

'Wh... what are you doing?' he whispered hoarsely.

* * *

There was that scent again. Like a sunlit herb garden studded with... citrus trees. He could sense Poppy...not humming and bustling but still and quiet for once...standing beside his bed. Had she brought an aromatherapeutic tonic with her?

Then fingers were touching his cheek, lifting his hair. Quicker than thought, his hand shot up and captured a thin wrist. He opened his eyes to see, not Poppy, but... Hermione Granger?

'Wh... what are you doing,' he choked out in a whisper. He felt disorientated. And so thirsty.

He dropped her wrist and flicked his eyes over to the bedside table, where there was a spoon but no water glass. 'Thirsty,' he croaked. 'Need water.'

It took the shocked girl more than a second to react. 'Of course,' she said, drawing her wand. She Transfigured the spoon into a tumbler with a crooked straw in it, then she pointed her wand into the glass, muttering, 'Aguamenti Satis.' It filled and she held it out to him as he hauled himself, grimacing, into a half-seated position.

He poked at the straw. 'What is this?'

'Oh! Bendy straw,' she said, demonstrating its bendiness with a flick of her finger and thumb. 'Here.' She guided the tip of the straw to his mouth. 'Sip through it, and you don't have to sit up quite so much.'

He drained the glass and murmured, 'More. Please.' She refilled it and stood watching him, smiling brightly. As though she were the proud mother of a toddler learning to drink from a cup.

He set the glass down, settled back on his pillows, and fixed a sour, narrow-eyed glare on her.

What was this person...this smiling, sweet-smelling person...doing in his room, touching his face?

Her presence was bewildering, and, as such, it irritated him. Therefore, he would irritate her back, and she would leave. QED.

Speaking slowly and with as cold an inflection as he could manage, he said, 'Miss Granger. What, pray tell, are you doing here? Aside from sharing with me the wonders of that Muggle marvel, the bendy straw?'

The girl was unperturbed. In fact, she was clearly trying to temper her widening smile.

'Professor Snape. I am very happy to see you on the mend,' she said, eyes beaming into his. 'I have something for you I was going to leave with Madam Pomfrey, but I couldn't find her and it's a valuable object, so I popped in here with it. You happened to wake just... at that moment.' Her smile faltered in earnest now, and she cast her eyes down.

His scowl deepened. 'And what is this... valuable... object?'

'This,' she said, turning to the table and picking up a tiny metal box. She opened it and shook two smooth, semicircular pieces of metal into her palm. 'I don't know if you've heard of this, it's only recently in production. It's called an M-Clip.

'These cuffs are, well, they're platinum, which is part of where the "valuable" comes in. But they're spelled to hold and play back music. You activate them with your wand, and put them on the outer rim of your ear, like this.' She tapped the cuffs with her wand, said 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,' and, pulling her hair back with one hand, slipped a cuff over her right ear.

She held up the other. 'May I?' Before he could answer, she leaned forward, brushed his hair away from his ear, and hooked the cuff on.

His eyebrows shot up.

'Mozart. Wonderful, isn't it?' Again her brown eyes were shining into his.

He nodded. He couldn't actually speak. The music was rippling and cascading through his head and his body like a sparkling stream. It was electrifying.

She picked up a little book from the table. 'This,' she said, 'tells you how to work it. You can key it to your wand, and add and remove any music you happen to have on vinyl record or compact disc. Only Muggle music, though. They haven't worked out how to add wizarding music yet.'

The girl smiled mischievously (another flavour in her wide repertoire of smiles, it seemed). '"They" being the Weasley twins of course. But don't worry. I've been using these for months and they haven't blown my head off.

'Here,' she unhooked the cuff from her ear and handed it to him. 'It's even better with both. So.' She picked up her book bag from the floor beside her feet. 'Keep it until after the holidays. I have... well, I have the Muggle equivalent that I can use while I'm away. Feel free to add any music you like; I can reprogram it when I get it back.

'I hope to see you back in the classroom soon, sir. Goodbye.' And she was gone.

Once he was alone, he let his face show some of his discomfiture. What WAS that? He didn't have a way of understanding what had just happened. Was it a dream? But the music pouring into and through him was very real. He opened his hand and picked up the second cuff between thumb and forefinger. He slid it over the rim of his ear.

She was right. It was even better with two.

* * *

Hermione walked quickly through the hospital wing on her way to the stairs and her afternoon Arithmancy lesson. She was nearly panting with exhilaration at her own daring. She had talked to him quite easily, just as though they were friendly. She'd given him her music. She had touched him. Twice.

And now she had this. From one pocket she pulled a glass tumbler and a crumpled bendy straw; from the other she drew her wand. 'Finite Incantatem,' she murmured, and the glass and straw were replaced by a spoon. His spoon, touched by his lips and tongue. The one elusive item that, according to Magic for Modern Lovers, would allow her to successfully cast Percipio Corium. If she were ever inclined to do so. Which she wasn't.

She crammed wand and spoon back into her pockets and strode on.

* * *

A/N: Aguamenti Satis: 'fill [this] with [enough] water'

To see a full size version of Hechicera's brilliant illustration for this chapter, go to QalaChaki.deviantart.com/art/Iecur-Fortis-potion-129372483. She took the basics I provided about this potion and then ran with it, researching liver tonics and alchemical notation and writing the potion. The detail is splendid. The wonderful sketch of SS was made by RosesAndThorns.

My thanks as always to lifeasanamazon and greenstuff. They are the superbest. And if they'd had the chance to read this A/N in advance, they would have said, 'Grammar? Do you mean "super-best" or "most superb"?' To which I would have responded, 'Yes!'