Salvation – Chapter 1

Madame Pomfrey looks older, more weary than she should for her seventy years. Her brown hair is streaked through with grey now, and her kind brown eyes look bloodshot from more than just exhaustion. And who can blame her? Certainly not I. The magnitude of the loss is unfathomable.

It’s the children that are starting to weigh down on her now, I can see that. She kneels over the small bodies, feeling numbly for a pulse, and when she finds none, simply folds their bruised and bloody arms over their still chests, throws a blanket over them, and walks away in silence.

I approach her, and reach out a hand to her hunched shoulder. “Take a break Madame Pomfrey. There’s still tea in the Great Hall. You’ve done enough. My healers and I can handle this while you are gone.” She opens her mouth as though to object, but I cut her off. “No arguments, Poppy.” I smile softly. “You’ve been at this for hours – hours now. A few minutes for a biscuit and a cup of tea is hardly going to be a detriment.”

Her eyes scan the vast entry, littered with bodies. Her eyes return to mine. “Yes…yes Gwendolyn, I think I will get a little tea.”

“Good.”

She grasps my hand in both of hers for a moment, her eyes full. “It was so good of St. Mungo’s to send over a contingent, so good of you and your department to volunteer.”

I give her hand a squeeze. “Of course, Poppy…”

One tear escapes from the corner of her eye. She wipes it away before turning and walking away.

“Ma’me, where should I put him?” I turn and come face-to-face with a tall strapping boy who looks as though he’s been beaten about the face more times than could possibly be healthy. His jaw and cheek bones are a collage of bruises and abrasions old and new. I look down at the boy in his arms. He can’t be yet thirteen. He is dead.

I reach out a hand to prod at the cut above the young man’s brow. It is slowly weeping blood onto his cheek and into his eye. It looks deep. “Put him there,” I reply, nodding toward the alcove off the entrance, where we are placing the dead. “And then go there…” I point to the first landing of the large staircase beside me. “And see one of the healers. That cut needs to be attended to.”

“Yes, Ma’me”

“Oh, and lad,” I add as he walks away. He turns. “What’s your name?”

“Neville, Ma’me. Neville Longbottom.”

I smile. “Alice and Frank’s boy?”

“Yes.” His eyes light up. “You know my parents?”

“Not well,” I admit. “They were in their seventh year when I was in my third, and in a different house, but they seemed the right sort of people, you know. I think they would be proud of you today.”

He nods, a softness in his eyes that wasn’t there before and then turns and does as I instructed him.

I look around me at the suffering and the waste and shake my head. It didn’t have to end like this. Not like this. But with Dumbledore insinuating his ideals on the student body since I was a girl, with his little band of Gryffindor favorites setting out to save the world in the way he had groomed them; taught them to, the only way they knew how - what really could one have expected.

“Ma’me…” I turn and come face to face with the hero of the hour. His green eyes are wide, and searching. He is still such a boy, so tired and broken beneath all that Gryffindor ‘courage’. He looks thin, too thin. His hair is long and matted, and his face is shadowed with several days’ growth; caked with dirt and blood. They say he looks like his father. I remember meeting him a few years back - the Weasley case. He had come in with the family to visit the man a couple of times. I had noticed the resemblance then, but one would be hard pressed to see it now. His mother’s eyes are still there though, shining out, almost peridot green beneath the dirt and grime.

“Ah…” I extend a hand. “Harry Potter isn’t it?”

“Yes, Ma’me.” He just stands and stares at me.

“Are you alright, Mr. Potter?”

He swallows hard, and I see his eyes fill. “Yes, I…I’m fine, but. I was…I was wondering if…”

“You were wondering what?” I know my tone is short, but there are children dying, and they need me more than he.

“I was wondering if you might spare an orderly, Ma’me.”

I shake my head. “I wish I could, but all my orderlies, including some of your friends are busy clearing the grounds. Now, if there is someone specifically that you need moved, then you will have to find a friend and have them help you. Be sure you do it manually. I don’t suggest trying magic just now. You’ve had quite a shock.” I nod toward Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy’s boy sitting halfway down the steps with his face buried in his hands. “There. Ask the Malfoy boy. He doesn’t look busy.”

His eyes travel to where I’m pointing, and he nods. “Yeah…yeah, okay. That…that will be fine…” He still doesn’t move, and I reach out a hand to his arm.

“Have you seen a healer yet, Mr. Potter? You’ve been through a great deal from what I’ve heard, and it would be advisable to have a once over to make sure that there isn’t any residual spell damage…”

He’s still staring over at Malfoy. Finally his eyes return to mine. “You…you were the healer that attended to Mr. Weasley a couple of years ago, weren’t you?”

“Yes indeed. You’ve a good memory, Mr. Potter. I was sorry to hear of their loss.”

He just nods. “And the…the potions for his treatment, the antivenin; you…you were the one who…”

“Who developed them. Yes, Mr. Potter.”

His brow furrows as though he is desperately trying to recall something that is lost to him. “And how many…how many hours was it before Mr. Weasley received treatment and the antivenin?”

I take a deep breath and smile. “I’m sorry Mr. Potter, but as interesting as Arthur Weasley’s case was at the time, I’m afraid I can’t stand here discussing it just now. You understand…”

“Yes. Of course. Forgive me.” And then, without another word, he turns and heads up the stairs. I watch him for a moment as he sits down beside the Malfoy boy, and stares down at the stair beneath their feet, tracing small patterns with the toe of his shoe. I can see his lips moving, but I am too far away to hear what he says.

I turn away and get back to work.

XxxX

“Healer Braithwaite…”

It’s Potter again. It feels like I’ve only just dismissed him. I spoon another dose of Blood Replenishing Potion into the mouth of the girl on the floor before me. “Back so soon Potter? Dead or alive?”

“I…I’m sorry?”

“You went to fetch someone. I can only assume that you’ve found them. Are they dead or alive?” I snap my fingers to catch the attention of one of my healers who is racing by with a tray full of Skelegrow, and motion for them to come over and leave me a bottle.

“Well, I…I’m not sure Ma’me.”

The healer hands me a bottle and rushes off again. “Put them with the living then. I’ll attend to them when I’m done here.”

“Please, Ma’me…” He sounds broken, lost.

Administering a dose of Skelegrow, I finally turn around, and my heart stops dead in my chest. “Jesus Christ…” I choke out.

It’s been years since I saw you last – decades – and never in my worst nightmares could I ever have imagined that this would be how we would see one another again.

Potter has you under the arms, and Malfoy has your legs, both of them are smeared head to toe with what I can only assume is your blood. “Please…” Potter begs again. He looks pale, as though he might faint. The Malfoy boy’s cheeks are damp, shining trails of white forging their way through the blood. I can see his mother rushing over from across the Hall. No doubt she thinks the blood is his.

“There!” I bark, pointing to an empty space on the floor from which they have just removed one of the dead. Narcissa Malfoy has reached her son now; her hands are everywhere at once, assessing him for damage.

“How long?” I snap at Potter.

“What?”

“How long?!” I shout. “How long since it happened?” I haven’t felt for a pulse yet. I don’t dare.

“I…I don’t remember, I…”

“Not good enough. How long?!” I demand again.

A gut wrenching cry of grief above me momentarily tears my attention from the gaping, mangled wound that was once your throat. Mrs. Malfoy has recognized you. She falls to her knees beside your body, choking out pleadings and protestations I can’t even decipher. I grab her hands, as they try to unbutton your coat. “Mrs. Malfoy. I need you to leave. We need to act quickly, and I can’t…”

Her eyes snap to mine, mad with grief. “Don’t!” she chokes out. “Don’t you dare to touch him – filthy mudblood!”

I take a deep breath and look her straight in the eye. “Mrs. Malfoy, I am trying to help him, and this…” I motion toward her hysterics. “This is not helping.”

“Please, Mother…” Draco Malfoy reaches out for her arm, but she shrugs him off. Her husband has arrived by her side now, and I address him. He barely looks strong enough to restrain her, but I have to try.

“Mr. Malfoy. I can’t do what I need to here. Please…please be so kind as to take your wife elsewhere.” He is staring down at your mangled, wax-like body prone on the floor before him, something that looks like shock and guilt painted across his perfectly proportioned features. Finally he reaches down and takes his wife firmly by both arms. She fights him for a moment, but then collapses against his chest in another wave of tears.

He leads her away and I turn back to the two boys kneeling on the other side of you. “Now will one of you kindly tell me, how long it has been since he sustained this injury.”

Potter finally begins to look as though his head is clearing. “Five hours ago.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes, Ma’me.”

“And it was the same snake as in the Weasley case?”

“Yes Ma’me. I…I saw it happen with my own eyes.”

“And where is the animal now?”

“Dead Ma’me. Neville Longbottom….”

I look down at you. You look dead. You should be dead. If the venom hasn’t killed you in all this time, then the blood loss certainly should have. There’s no use feeling for a pulse. The venom will have slowed your heart to the point where it would be imperceptible, but I can only pray that the venom has done its work and that it has done it quickly. It will have limited the blood loss. I look at your clothes sticky and wet, the two blood smeared boys in front of me, and my heart grows faint.

“I need the venom. Tell Mr. Longbottom…” The boy in questions walks by us, and I call him over. “Longbottom!” He turns around and comes over, staring down at you when he reaches us. His face goes pale.

“S…Snape…”

“Yes Longbottom, Professor Snape.” I parrot, irritated. “Listen to me, and listen carefully. Potter here says you killed the snake, the one that belonged to Voldemort?”

The boy cringes at the sound of the name, but nods.

“Do you remember where?” I inquire.

“Ye…yes, I think so…” He is still staring down at you and growing paler by the moment.

“Then go and bring me the head.”

“Wh…what?” he stammers.

“The head!” I snap. “I need the venom, and we’ve only a few hours left before it loses its potency. Go now!”

He starts a little. “Yes, Ma’me.” And then he is gone.

I turn back to Potter and Malfoy. “I can’t do this alone. I will need your help. Are you up for that, do you think?” Both boys nod without pause.

“Good, then you can start by getting him out of this frock coat if you will, and then I need to know which of you excelled at Potions.”

XxxX

I don’t know how you’ve managed to survive. If you have been dosing yourself with small, almost imperceptible amounts of antivenin these last months, then that could explain how the venom failed to kill you, but the blood loss… That I can’t explain. I stop trying and count my blessings.

Neither of the boys in question was worth their weight when it came to Potions. Oh well, no doubt you tried your best.

I’ve too many wounded to attend to, even now. Many have been moved to St. Mungo’s, but there is still a great number here, those who are still too unstable to be moved. I’ve had to get creative, and so I’ve enlisted two young ladies to brew your antivenin instead - a Hermione Granger, who seems skilled enough and can follow instructions like no one I’ve ever met (it will be a Ministry job for her when this is all over I wager), and a Ravenclaw girl, Luna Lovegood, whom I wouldn’t trust on her own in a lab for the world. But when you take her divergent thinking and well developed intuition and match it with Granger’s attention to detail and almost religious penchant for following the rules, you come up with something approaching your talent in the lab.

The Malfoys have taken their little prince home with them now, but Potter’s stayed and is willing to help with almost anything. In fact, he’s hardly left your bedside since the night he and Malfoy brought you in. I never worry about you when I can’t be with you. I know that there will always be Potter.

It’s late, and with the night staff just arrived I finally have a chance to take a breath. I come out of the office across the medical wing to see the boy sitting in the same spot he was four hours ago when I left him. He’s probably forgotten to eat again.

I walk around the other side of your bed and pull up a chair. He is sitting there, his hand beside yours on the blanket, as though wanting to take it, but not certain he has the right.

“You can touch him, you know. It won’t hurt him. In fact, it might be good for him.”

Potter sits back, pulling his hand away. He’s cleaned up considerably since the night of the battle, but he’s left his hair long. It’s pulled back now in a low tail, and he’s still sporting a small goatee. It makes him look older. I wonder if he’s adopted the look to reflect how he feels. Merlin knows he’s been through hell in the last year.

His eyes look haunted when he finally turns them on me. “I…I don’t think he would want me to…”

I smile. “All the more reason to do it then, eh… I imagine that nothing would motivate him to come back to us more than the opportunity to bark at you.”

He smiles. “They’ve told you then…” The smile slowly fades. “They’ve told you what it was like with he and I?”

I nod. “Severus has never been an easy person, and if what you’ve been telling the Ministry is true then he has been under an enormous amount of stress the last few years. That sort of ordeal will weigh on the best of us.”

He whispers something I don’t quite catch.

“I’m sorry?”

“He is….”

I shake my head, still not understanding.

“He is the best of us…” he repeats softly.

I look down at your throat, bandaged tight, wounds weeping through; at your pale skin and limp hair fanned out over the pillow and something in my heart twists painfully. I’m so determined to save you, but I have to acknowledge that it might not be possible. And then there are all the ramifications if it is. You will never be the same, and I am not certain that you will want to live like that. You’ve always been so proud.

I nod. “Perhaps…”

He looks down at you again, and his hand slides back over the coverlet, stopping just before he reaches your fingers. “Did you know him well?” he asks quietly.

I smile softly down at you, and remember you how you were: young, gaunt, broken. You were nearly come undone by her death – this boy’s mother. Now you look even more frail than you did then. You are still young at thirty-eight, but your black hair is shot through with grey, and there are deep lines forging their way across your forehead, and between your brows.

I nod. “I like to think I did. He was my Potions professor for second term sixth year and my seventh year. I…I remember when your parent’s were killed. It was a very difficult time for him.”

He looks down at you, a strange look on his face, as though he is seeing you – really seeing you – for the first time. “He must have been so young…”

“Twenty-one – only a few years older than you are now. It was young to be a professor. He was teaching those of us who had been in school when he was, who remembered him as a student. I would imagine that it took a great deal of courage for him to stand up in front of us that first day, but you never would have known it.” I smile at the recollection, and he looks up at me, his eyes examining my face as though trying to make a memory of it.

“You look like her, you know.”

“Who?”

“My…my mother. You…you remind me of her…”

He is lost and looking for anything to cling to in a sea of loneliness. There was a girl in here with him a few days ago; one of the Weasleys. They’re together they say, and she looks like her too – like his mother. “Your mother was a beautiful woman, Harry, far more beautiful than I, but I thank-you for that. It’s very flattering.”

He looks back down at you, and his finger twitches, but still he doesn’t touch you.

“Why don’t you go get something to eat, get some rest,” I suggest. “I’ll sit with him for awhile.”

He shakes his head. “No. I…I want to stay.”

I sigh. “I’ll get the elves to bring you something then. And make sure you get some rest. It wouldn’t do for you to get run down, not with the trials coming up in a few weeks.”

He just nods, his eyes glued to your face, as though he might be able to will you awake.