Chapter Forty-Eight—A Matter Of Time

“I’m getting a little tired of sewing your hand up. Will I be forced to ban all sharp objects from your possession or will you show me that you understand which end of a blade you’re supposed to grip?”

Parr seemed to find that statement inordinately funny and laughed like a drain, nearly choking herself as she continued to shovel soup into her mouth with the spoon clutched in her uninjured hand. Snape thinned his lips in disapproval of her reaction and squinted at the double cut he was suturing. The previous gash in Parr’s hand had reopened, her blade slicing both stitches and barely-healed flesh.

“It was my understanding that your knives were kept out of your reach whilst on school grounds,” he continued under his breath so that Pomfrey couldn’t hear. The mediwitch was hovering near the entrance to the infirmary, talking to Sprout, who’d brought her a fistful of greenery. The two women had spent some time in conversation, and Snape wasn’t prepared to chance that would continue. He’d already had to deal with Pomfrey’s stridulous spiel on his ineptitude at keeping a close enough eye on a patient and her subsequent loitering over him as he treated Parr. He couldn’t blame her, though. If their positions had been reversed, he would have been livid to find Parr in the state that she turned up in.

“My work blade is kept out of my reach,” Parr told him, responding to the snippy statement made over her sliced hand. “Did you think I only had one?” It was the first time that she had spoken since he had agreed to let her untie the knot in his mind.

It had been a mark of how afflicted she had been that Parr had permitted any assistance in getting her from where Snape had found her back to the castle. Perhaps she had realised that she had been far too weak to manage it on her own. Perhaps she was too delirious to realise that she had allowed him to touch her. Perhaps something he had done granted him immunity—he had no idea what. Seevy etiquette seemed so convoluted as to defy common sense.

Snape had held his tongue as Pomfrey had levelled all manner of accusations at him, feeling far too melancholic and fatigued to be disaffected enough to defend himself. He’d barely noticed when the mediwitch moved onto criticising him for tracking mud and water into her hallowed space.

“Let her eat whatever she wants until I return,” he’d managed to grind out when Pomfrey inhaled through necessity.

“And when will that be, Severus?” Pomfrey had shrilled, drawing Parr away from him. “Before or after she’s developed pneumonia?”

“Ten minutes,” he pronounced flatly before stalking out, ensuring his clothing dropped as much muddy water as possible on the polished wooden floor with a whispered Draining Charm.

He discovered that Parr could eat an incredible amount of food in the space of ten minutes. Pomfrey also reaffirmed her medical skill by bringing the Striker back to some semblance of quiescence and lucidity in such a short space of time. Parr still had the purple-shadowed, overly bright and widened eyes of someone on the verge of physical exhaustion, but at least her attention was set unwaveringly on the food before her.

“How did you manage to clean her up so quickly?” Snape asked, squinting suspiciously at Parr’s creased but clean clothing, dried but knotted hair, and dirtless but grey-tinged skin.

“Mud and water are not immune to magic, Severus,” Pomfrey pointed out, “as you so kindly proved to me before.” She was struggling to get Parr out of her overcoat, but the Striker refused to drop the sustenance she had clutched in her hands. “She won’t let me get to the cut on her palm, and it’s bleeding badly.”

The strip of orange material was wrapped clumsily around Parr’s left hand, darkening to deep red.

“No more meat except for fish,” Snape pronounced, snatching the chicken leg out of Parr’s right hand. She hissed at him briefly before stuffing a bread roll into her mouth. The planes of cheek and jawbones stood out under the skin of her face, giving her an unusual fragility that seemed at odds with her movements. Snape made a mental note to keep his hands out of the proximity of her mouth whilst she was ravaging anything edible she could grab.

She thrust her injured hand at him, not bothering to look up from the plate of spinach she was pulling towards her along the table that sat across the cot she was seated on. At first it made Snape feel like a lackey rather than a medical practitioner, but when he noticed Pomfrey’s irritated expression that she’d been denied something that Parr freely permitted him to attend to, it made him smirk. Rather childish, he had to admit.

“How many knives do you own?” Snape asked Parr, his face twisted into disgust as she shamelessly licked the soup bowl clean.

“That is an egregiously inappropriate question, Dual,” she told him through a hastily-crammed mouthful of green beans. “Be grateful I don’t strap your hide for asking it.”

Pomfrey’s return prevented him from retorting waspishly about her disgusting table manners.

“How much ephedra did you give her?” he snapped at the mediwitch crossly. “It’s made her extremely ill-tempered.”

“It’s made her ill-tempered?” muttered Pomfrey under her breath. “A quarter-dose. I was reluctant to give her any more because her pulse was already too elevated.”

Snape cut the suture thread carefully and pierced the needle into his sleeve. “Treat her for blood loss, metabolic acidosis and thrombocytopenia. Let her eat as much non-animal protein as possible.” He drew out a small amber flask from his pocket and handed it to Pomfrey. “Five drops every four hours under the tongue until mid-day tomorrow, then every eight hours.”

Parr stopped chewing abruptly. “What’s it for?”

“Eat your beans,” he told her dismissively and began to bind her stitched hand. She snatched it out of his grasp, causing the rolled bandage to fall to the floor and unravel.

“You will tell me what it’s for or I will refuse to take it,” she told him frostily, eyes glaring out from their shadowed sockets.

Snape huffed at her stubbornness. “It is a generic treatment for cachexia. You will take it.” He turned back to Pomfrey. “When was the last dose of painkiller?”

“Just over five hours ago.”

“I’m not taking that anymore.”

That brought his head back around with a dangerous deliberation. “You will take what I prescribe for you.”

Parr actually blinked a few times under the forcefulness of his words. “It… scatters my thoughts. I cannot focus.” There was a slight emphasis on the last word that alerted him to the underlying meaning.

“And how will you deal with the pain unaided, Miss Parr?”

“How I have always dealt with it,” she replied with a frown. “I cannot be drugged to the eyeballs at the expense of my work capacity.”

“Unless you accede to the dictates of your treatment, you will not have a work capacity,” Snape pointed out tetchily. “Hypokinesia is my problem to deal with, not yours, and I will handle it as I determine best, not you.”

“No painkiller!” Parr barked at him and resumed stuffing her face as if the matter had been decided. Her outstretched hand graciously allowed Snape to continue treating her freshest injury. “And don’t think you can hide it in my food or drink!” she added, spraying half-masticated bits of food everywhere. “It stinks like dog feet.”

It seemed to amuse her to appear as the Dark Lord to him. He could almost smell the thrill it gave her over the metallic tang of his own terror. Her pacing was more of leisure than of searching, walking calmly from side to side in that room that had no door. Waiting patiently. Just passing the time. Her silhouette passing back and forth in front of the boarded-up window. Or rather, his silhouette.

It was clear that she still couldn’t see him. He wondered what it was that hid him from those merciless, red eyes. Standing as still as possible, he wasn’t willing to test the strength of the camouflage, whatever its source.

Death stopped in the centre of the room, poised over the rotten bloom on the floor that covered the hole to oblivion.

“It’s only a matter of time. Once she unties the knot, you’re mine.”

His heart stopped.

Death had a nasty laugh. He could see the needlepoint teeth against the wintry blue light coming through the cracks of the wooden boards covering the window.

“She didn’t tell you that, did she?” Her pacing resumed. “I didn’t think she would.” Reflected light flickered briefly over her bald pate.

How could Death know this? He shook his head slightly, as if to dislodge a troublesome fly from his brow. Of course she would know. She was a figment of his imagination. A construct of his fears and subconscious impulses. She would know what he knew simply because she was a creation of his mind. There was no separation between them.

“More of a separation than you think, Severus,” she told him in her high voice, a voice not that dissimilar to the Dark Lord’s. They could be siblings, Death and the Dark Lord. “I am not you, although you promised you would be mine. Never forget that. Your Striker does not stand above me. No-one does.”

The gossamer robes she wore whispered through the dry air, a susurration that sang of her final victory.

You do not have me yet.

“It is only a matter of time, Severus. I know her tricks. I should. Only a matter of time.”

Snape awoke in gasping desperation, plunged into the stark waters of frigid doubt, cursing the part of him that tortured the whole. Why would he punish himself like this? This Death was not real.

He spent the rest of the night in the infirmary, staring at Parr’s unconscious form, repeating this sentence over and over again in his head as if to purge that sadistic fragment of his soul that deemed it justified to have him twist on the hook of emotional torture.

Pomfrey appeared an hour before the steely dawn to coax Parr far enough out of her comatose slumber to medicate her. The mediwitch merely glanced at Snape as if it were of no surprise to her to find him there.

She said nothing and brought him tea. For that, he was grateful. And for the tea.

He dragged himself to the breakfast table late. If he looked half as bad as he felt, it would explain why no-one wanted to sit near him.

Snape didn’t know how much of the conversation he missed, but Pirino’s name cut through the fog of his fatigue.

The man’s body had been found, badly decomposed and dumped in the Thames River. So the Daily Prophet claimed. Flitwick and Hooch were in an overdramatic flap about it, revelling in the gruesomeness of it all, dissecting and analysing every printed word.

Snape sighed quietly, staring at his plate. It was only ever a matter of time.

“Why are you reading that?”

Her slightly bloodshot eyes lifted to his over the top of the book.

“Required reading,” she replied, mouth full of porridge.

“So it’s just my subject you choose to do so little study in.”

Parr tutted, her expression hidden behind the book. “To study Potions in your presence would be gauche.” She set the bowl down and turned a page. “Plus you’d do nothing but snipe at me, and I can’t concentrate when you do that.” She picked up the bowl again and tipped it so that porridge slid out of it and into her mouth.

Snape sniffed and studied the sutured cuts. The flesh around the wounds was much more inflamed than it should have been.

“It is a child’s book.”

Parr snorted. “I’m sure Remus will be happy to hear you say that.”

“Lupin is an oaf, and an ill-educated one at that,” Snape replied prissily, dabbing ointment on the stitched cuts. “He is insufficiently qualified to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts.”

“And you are?” The quirked eyebrow spoke louder than her tone.

“My knowledge is vastly greater.”

“So’s your ego.”

Pomfrey’s approach stymied the opportunity to make a cutting invective in Parr’s direction. The empty porridge bowl was removed and replaced by a dish of shelled, boiled eggs. By the time the mediwitch passed out of hearing range, Snape’s crankiness had subsided, which surprised him. He must have been more tired than he realised.

“That book won’t tell you what you need to know.”

The grey eyes peered at him over the book cover once again.

“I have something better.”

Parr’s eyebrows lifted, just a fraction.

Snape waited until Parr’s hand was re-bandaged before calling the house-elf’s name, ever so quietly. For a few moments, he thought she hadn’t heard, but the tap of her bare feet against the wood drew his attention to the doorway of the infirmary. This was the second time Folter had appeared a distance away from him, and both times it had been in Parr’s presence. It irked him that he didn’t know the reason why.

“Folter, I need the green, leather-bound book on the third shelf in my study. The one with the gold lettering down the spine.” He flicked a glance in Pomfrey’s direction. The mediwitch was unfolding sheets with her wand and remaking the already spotless cots, buried in her task. “Without anyone else noticing, if you please.”

Folter tucked her hair behind her ears and bobbed her head. “Yes, Professor.” She glanced quickly at Parr before turning to leave the way she had arrived. If Snape hadn’t been watching her carefully, he would’ve missed the look. He squinted suspiciously at Parr.

“She knows that house-elf Apparition hurts me,” she told him, all but her eyes still hidden behind the book. Her freshly bandaged hand sought out the dish of boiled eggs. “It’s like someone firing a gun in my ear.”

“And how would she know that?”

Parr shrugged slightly. “I spend a fair amount of time in the kitchens, and unlike you, I do talk to people without an ulterior motive.” She chewed her boiled egg for a moment. “Why not wave your stick and get the book yourself?”

“The shelf is warded. Folter knows how to bypass it.”

“That’s very trusting of you. How out of character.” She said it lightly but it rankled nonetheless.

“I trust those who earn it,” he replied tersely and snatched the book out of her hand. Parr’s face registered her surprise, her cheeks not quite as hollow as the previous night. She must have eaten a gargantuan amount of food to regain the weight her Handler had sucked away from her.

Snape divested the book of its cover and held the tome up for a second before dropping it, flat-side down, onto the floor. It made an enormous bang that echoed off the infirmary walls and drew an exclamation that was surprisingly coarse out of Pomfrey’s mouth. The sound covered the appearance of the leather-bound book on the cot before Parr’s crossed legs.

“Sharp timing,” she murmured, impressed, her eyes watering slightly.

Snape flipped the discarded book’s cover at Parr, his body hiding the action from Pomfrey. “Cover it with that. If anyone finds it, I will ensure your punishment is sufficiently retributive for breaking into my study and stealing it.”

“Naturally.”

“Left foot.”

“Yes, doc.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Yes, doc.”

Parr waited until Pomfrey had finished her cantankerous muttering at being startled before sliding the book jacket over her new literature. Fortunately, both books were of similar thickness, so unless anyone saw what was written on the pages inside, no-one would be any the wiser. Unless a person had a reason to go digging about, looking for something illicit. That thought reminded him of something he had been meaning to ask Parr for some time.

“Why don’t you trust Moody?”

“Not here,” she whispered, her eyes fixed on the open book in her hand. Another boiled egg disappeared into her mouth. Snape’s hands stilled on her foot, causing Parr to flick a glance up at him. A liquid velvet touch trickled down his spine. Cautioning. Calming. Promising.

He cleared his throat hastily and stood up. “Poppy, since Miss Parr is so concerned about muscle atrophy, she is permitted to walk outside for twenty minutes after lunch, weather permitting.” He heard the intake of breath in preparation for a dispute, but he strode on past the mediwitch towards the door. “I will accompany her to ensure she does not roll in the mud.”

They did not speak until some distance from the castle.

For once, the day was neither drenched in frigid rain nor draped in ashen cloud. The sky was an almost unfamiliar blue, a shade that belonged in spring rather than in the pit of winter. It was still bitterly cold. Pomfrey had made sure, to an almost ridiculous degree, that Parr wore sufficient clothing to block any chill from reaching inside her. It was a wonder she could move at all under all the material she was bundled up in. The Striker had flatly refused to wear a woolly hat.

As soon as they were hidden from the sight of anyone who would happen to glance out of the castle windows, Parr was scrabbling at the thick scarf around her neck.

“Leave it,” Snape told her, catching the movement out of the corner of his eye as they walked side by side.

“I’m sweating to death here!” Parr snapped up at him, trying to untangle the material from the impossible knot that Pomfrey had tied into it. “It’s like being clamped under a giant’s armpit!”

“Why do you never follow instructions given to you by medical practitioners without endless whining? Has it never occurred to you that you are being treated in a manner conducive to addressing your particular ailments?”

“I’m overheating and getting cross! How is that addressing my ailments?”

“You are perfectly capable of inducing those states without anyone else assisting you so it seems redundant to blame that on being dressed appropriately for the weather. If you dislike that, you have a choice: deal with it or stay indoors.”

“I can’t stay indoors and have Poppy restrict me to bed-rest! I can’t afford to be enfeebled.” She was getting increasingly agitated at failing to untie the scarf and had settled for trying to slip the snug loop over her head. Snape wondered how much of her irritation was caused by the scarf and how much from withdrawal from the painkiller.

“What precisely are you expecting to take part in that you eschew adequate recovery time?” he inquired, squinting down at her struggling form. “Common sense should tell you that to rush recuperation will merely prolong your debilitation. Since you repeatedly fail to follow medical advice, at least listen to that.”

Parr succeeded in freeing her head from the noose of her scarf. “Time is a luxury I don’t have. If I’m required to track, I have to be ready, as strong as I can be. That is what I agreed to.”

“What—”

“That agreement is not your concern, Dual,” Parr pointed out in a ratty voice, stuffing the scarf into her pocket with a shaking hand.

“It is my concern if it affects your recovery,” Snape replied sharply. “Since you’re shouldering your Handler’s ill-health, threatening what's left of your constitution is foolish.”

“What choice do I have?” Parr growled at him, her frustration evident. “I cannot be drugged at the level you would have me at. “I…” She paused awkwardly. “… barely hear her anymore as it is. The drugs make it worse. I can’t focus enough to even feel her there. If I lose that link between us, I… cannot help her.”

“As it is, you may be doing her a level of disservice you do not realise.”

That stopped her in her tracks. “What do you mean?”

Forced to stop as well, he turned back to face her, seeing the alarm in her eyes.

“You take her symptoms, but not the pathogens. There is no trace of them in your body, but your Handler is undoubtedly suffering from infection and perhaps even blood toxicity. Symptoms are there for a reason: to assist the body in combating the condition. Take the symptoms away and the infection has little to stop it.”

“This is how we have always done it.” The stubborn set to her jaw spoke volumes.

“For how long? Hours? Days? Certainly not weeks or months.”

There was no reaction on her face, but Snape felt a sweep of coldness run over his skin that had nothing to do with the chill wind that clutched at their clothing.

“Over a short period of time, it makes sense, but in this situation you are burning up her immune system as well as your own.”

“What choice do I have?” Parr whispered eventually, a ripple of vexation under the sheen of sweat across her forehead, her hair stirring in the breeze and catching the pale winter sun.

“There may be a better way,” he told her and turned back to follow the path that they were on.

“Which is?” she prompted, trotting eagerly beside him. “I must know!” Her shaking hand nearly touched his arm but she pulled it away before contact. “Tell me!”

“The apoth. I can give him drugs to treat your Handler, sufficient to stabilise her but not strong enough to alert suspicion or… attract unwanted attention.” That was a dark blot that neither of them wanted to spend time lingering over. It was more than likely that Greyback had abused Parr’s Handler in dreadful ways already, but her precarious state of health would surely have prevented its continuance. At least for now.

“But the fat man said he never knows when they will take him to where Greyback is!” Parr pointed out astutely. “What if he’s taken there but doesn’t have the drugs with him?”

“He will keep them with him at all times,” Snape assured her, his gaze fixed resolutely ahead. “I will make sure of it.” He steeled himself for another wash of Parr’s derision and disgust at his use of the Imperius curse. An “abomination”, she had called it. Whilst he never enjoyed using it, it had been a crucial tool on a number of occasions to achieve the result he was after. Its use always left him feeling nauseous, but always there was little choice in the matter for him. To have someone echo his own deep-seated disgust elicited a shame in him at his use of this Unforgivable Curse, a shame that he tried to drown in anger.

But for a wonder, Parr said nothing. Still, he felt her rancour burning his left side as keenly as if she had shouted at him. Of course she would hate how he would force the apoth, but what choice did they have in the time left to them? It was an unspoken question that they both ruminated on as they walked around the grounds.

Every so often, a flush of Parr’s withdrawal touched him, and each time she drew it back from him, like the ebb and flow of the tides. It was a sensation Snape was familiar with, despite the number of years that had passed since he had felt it. He had experienced a terrible guilt opening her to its eventual sting, but had he not given Pomfrey the anodyne, Parr would have folded under the pressure of the pain she was absorbing from her Handler, a pressure that would have stopped her heart. Right now, she must be suffering significantly to allow her normally steely mental control to slip.

He noticed that she was starting to shake and realised they would have to return to the castle before the withdrawal gripped her too tightly. He would have to shepherd her back surreptitiously or there’d be a protracted argument about it.

“Why don’t you trust Moody?” Perhaps he could distract her with a change in conversation.

Parr scrubbed a hand under her nose absently. “He smells…” She appeared to struggle for a word. “…duplicitous.”

“Alastor Moody is a man with an agenda,” Snape noted calmly, altering the direction they were walking in ever so slightly. “He is also insane. They don’t call him Mad-Eye for nothing.”

“It’s more than that,” Parr muttered, seemingly oblivious to the way Snape was manoeuvring her in a wide arc in order to head back to the castle. “He is there, but not.”

Snape frowned at that cryptic summation.

Parr made an irritated sound and waved a hand in front of her face as if to ward off an annoying fly. “Duplicity I can identify, even if I cannot discern the details. This is something more. It’s as if he himself is a lie.” Again, the gasp of exasperation. “I can’t explain it.”

“You distrust him the same way you distrust the Headmaster?”

“No, that one is different. His agendas are so layered that I lose track of where he’s headed.” She stumbled slightly on the uneven grass they were crossing even though her eyes were fixed on the ground in front of her. “That one would do whatever he felt necessary to get what he wanted,” she said quietly, her hair falling forward to partially hide her face. “That I can understand if not condone. I distrust him, but not for the same reasons. And he is not as opaque as he likes to think he is. Watch yourself, Dual. And watch him closer.”

Snape chose not to respond to that, though it unsettled him how closely her assessment of Dumbledore matched his own.

“How much do you keep from him?”

“As much as I can. He would see us yoked to the MLE once more and not give a thought about the reasons why we left in the first place.”

“And yet you allow Lupin to gather information for the organisation you claim you wish to avoid control by.”

A blood-shot eye rolled up at him. “I tell Lupin nothing of importance. I dislike lying to him, even if it is lie by omission, but I will not be responsible for our return to slavery. I do what I must. And besides, as a teacher you should know that it’s possible to say all manner of things and at the same time say nothing at all. Students are not the only ones capable of that.” She sighed heavily. “Why didn’t you just turn around and head straight back to the castle instead of nudging me into a circuitous route? It’s like walking with someone who has one leg shorter than the other!”

“Smell my duplicity, did you?”

A barking laugh was all the answer he got to that question.

The entrance to the castle loomed in front of them, the threshold beyond which they could not talk of such things. They were a few steps from it when Parr spoke again, very quietly.

“Go visit the fat man, Dual. Then we will unpick the knot.”