Chapter Three

“Don’t sign a bank draft your wand can’t cash.” Poppy’s words from his first summer under her tutelage tramped through Severus’ memory as he looked from the bundle to the ill young witch in the bed. “You’ll save yourself and the one in your care a world of trouble if you remember that.”

Severus sighed and ran a shaking hand through his hair. Merlin, but he’d been so young back then. Fresh from his third year, he had thought he could handle anything the world threw at him. Perhaps that was the reason Hogwarts’ matron had felt it imperative to imprint those words on his brain at every turn. It was a lesson he’d learned well.

A soft moan from the girl tugged at his attention. He quickly scanned the pale features and listless limbs. Perspiration dotted her brow, though her skin was cool beneath his fingers. Poorly healed sores marred her face and arms. Although she was covered by a mound of soiled blankets, it was easy to see how concave her belly was by the way the fabric dipped. Obviously, she hadn’t been acquainted with a decent meal in quite some time. She was frail, and her body convulsed with each breath. There was little doubt her situation was beyond his abilities. Perhaps she was beyond even Poppy’s well-honed skills, but since St. Mungo’s was out of the question, she was the only choice. He looked back across the room, a physical ache radiating deep in his chest at the decision he needed to make. If the bundle cradled in Hermione’s hands held what he thought it held... Well, he could keep at least one soul this side of the veil today.

He brushed his fingers against the girl’s cheek. “Rest, little one,” he whispered, then stood and crossed the small distance to his wife.

With all the care used with a prized Graphorn horn, he lifted the swaddled lump from Hermione’s hands. Cradled against his palms, he held his breath as he pealed back the coarse, filthy burlap. A tiny squeak, not much stronger than a newborn kitten’s mewl, and a minuscule wiggle as the chilly air of the world touched a crown of dark hair still damp with the fluids of birth restarted not only the creep of time across space but his own heart.

Another gentle tug revealed more of the tiny human. A face still squished by the passage from womb to world. The correct number of appendages from shoulders to the tips of ten petite fingers—five on each perfectly formed miniature hand. A well proportioned, if somewhat undernourished, torso suggested a gestation of less than the standard length of forty weeks. An umbilical cord that had been appropriately severed from the placenta. Distinguishable genitalia appropriate for gender assignment. Two little legs, curled as they had been in the girl’s belly with corresponding feet no longer than his index finger and the required five toes on each. All in all, an acceptable specimen, save for the worrisome grayish-blue tint visible beneath the layer of vernix caseosa and just-congealing blood, and the way the lean chest seemed to collapse inward with each inhalation, revealing for a few seconds the quivering pulse of a tiny heart.

“Severus?” Tears rimmed Hermione’s voice. “Is it…”

He shook his head. “She’s alive, love.” He glanced at the fragile newborn girl in his hands. “But she needs a bit of attention at the moment.” He thrust his right hip toward his wife. “Retrieve a handkerchief from that pocket and Transfigure it into the warmest blanket you can manage.”

While her fingers trembled against his thigh as she delved into his front trouser pocket, he shifted the tiny infant enough to free one of his hands. Each bit of wisdom Poppy had ever imparted filled his mind and commanded his movements. Keep her warm. Clear her airway. Assess her—

“Severus, perhaps we should wait until Poppy—“

“We don’t have time to wait for Poppy,” he snapped. He could only attribute the sharpening of his tongue in situations such as this to the lingering genetic material of Tobias. Luckily, those who knew him best, like his Hermione, took it all in stride. And it never erupted into the conflagration he’d experienced when dear old Dad was worked into a right snit. He paused the list of procedures running through his brain long enough to reach for his wife and trail apologetic fingers down her cheek. “Besides, I spent all my summers after my third year at Hogwarts as Poppy’s assistant. She taught me a fair few lessons about infant care when she was called upon to act as midwife.”

Hermione caught his fingers with her own and held them against her skin for a moment. “I have no doubt, dearest.” She smiled, a sad sort of upward curl of her lips. “This little rosebud among the rubbish heap is in the very best of hands.” Her soul caressed his even as she handed the warmed and enlarged square of flannel to him. “What can I do now?”

“I need a pipette.” A quick cataloguing of the contents of the various stacks and piles littering the soiled floor offered another possibility. “Or a syringe, sans needle and sterilized.”

Pride swelled as he watched his wife retrieve the needed item with a silent Accio!. Another shift of magic and the needle vanished. Then came the gentle whoosh of a sterilization spell she’d learned during her earliest days in his Potions class. Before he could blink, the syringe settled into his outstretched palm, as fresh and clean as if he’d taken it from a cupboard in The Princeton Hospital.

Years of training ingrained his motor functions with the techniques needed to cross to the lopsided table with speed while keeping the contents of his arms undisturbed. He motioned for Hermione to take the blanket and spread it on the streaked and gouged laminate surface. Despite the adrenaline pumping through him, his hands were steady as he turned the baby from back to front, carefully removing the rags her mother had wrapped her in. He Vanished them with a nonverbal flick of his wrist. Once he gently deposited the newborn in the center of the white fabric, he set to work on easing her breathing.

He felt more than saw his wife wince as the baby girl squirmed against the intrusion of the syringe into her left nostril. “Isn’t there a spell or charm for this?”

Oh, how he wished there was. “It will be worse for her if we use magic, Hermione.” He glanced at the woman whose compassion was as much his undoing as hers. Her dark eyes were sunken and haunted, just as they had been the last time he found her in this damnable flat. His soul lurched against his throat, begging to be released to comfort her. “It’s what is best for her, love.”

His witch blinked rapidly, but nodded, her chin quivering slightly. “I wish Poppy would hurry.”

Severus glanced at the girl barely stirring in the bed across the room, then back to the baby in his care. The lean chest struggled a little less with the next inward draw of air. “So do I, love.” He frowned slightly as he inserted the syringe tip as far past the tiny tongue as he dared. A lack of loud, vocal protest from the tiny human unnerved him. “So do I.”