Primal Instincts and Accidental Imprinting
The alpha’s reaction was immediate. Upon hearing the other boy’s cry, James drew his wand and turned back to face him with his arm extended, poised and ready to swish and flick away whatever offensive thing had so disquieted the Slytherin omega as to make his scent sour in fear and distress.
What James saw made his alpha senses sharpen into overdrive, a chill running through his veins.
Protect, protect, protect.
Because Snape’s already pale face had lost all of its remaining colour, had gone as grey as the ash under the still-smoking cauldron.
Helplessly, Snape looked up at him, his hand pressed against the centre of his chest, and then the omega was keening low and pained, emitting a full-belly groan like James had done the one time he had been hit in the stomach with a bludger so hard it had knocked the wind out of him.
There was a frightened look in the omega’s eyes. The way he heaved, mouth open, faintly gasping in panic as his jaw twitched—it was clear that the omega was struggling to breathe.
And James found himself frozen in place, all executive functioning cut off from him because the omega was dying right before his eyes.
A warm, piercing heat quite distinct from the fear and adrenaline rushing through him began to prickle something in the alpha’s chest, making his magic thrum and prod and threaten to lash out.
His omega was going to die if he didn’t do something right then.
But how could the alpha do something if he had no idea what was happening?!
Within an instant, Snape was down on his hands and knees, scrambling to loosen his tie from around his neck, as though that were the thing constricting his airways, and just as suddenly, James was casting his patronous to Sirius, to Lupin—to get help—his heart pounding in his throat as the alpha’s need to protect his omega warred with James’s inability to do anything other than stand there helplessly, watching on in horror, in shame, because the Gryffindor could think of no spell that would be a fair match against an unknown attacker.
The alpha watched as his omega pulled off his own tie and cast it aside, before fumbling to pop open the buttons on the top of his shirt. And that was when James caught sight of the dark, green lines which ran out from under the boy’s collar like a weed, like devil’s snare, stemming from his scent gland and spredding slowly across his neck and chest.
Coiling, bramble-like, and sinister to the core.
Whether Snape noticed the markings or not didn’t change the fact that the look he gave the alpha in that moment was one of sheer terror, stinking mortal fear the only scent to come off him.
Severus Snape looked at him like he knew he was going to die and James Potter was going to be the last sight he ever saw, and something inside the alpha snapped.
Without a second thought, James threw himself onto his knees, just as Snape collapsed in full onto the floor of the boy’s lavatory, his every sense trained on the Slytherin. He knew without knowing how that the creeping lines could not be let to spread, that he must stop them, must slow them, must not move or rest or leave the omega’s side until they were gone.
The alpha took a shaky breath, suddenly made calm in the face of action—he could slow them, James could slow them—rolled Snape onto his back, and then he set to work.
It was not a counter charm, not really, but it was the best the prefect could do.
Chrona refuga, the time stifling charm.
Again and again, he whispered it, tracing the tip of his wand over each of the lines under the omega’s skin, over the new ones whose roots grew out of the scent gland on the Slytherin’s neck, and though time was not truly frozen, as it might be in the moments before a Time Turner takes effect, it passed as if wading through thick waters, bogged down as though by some invisible weight.
James did not stop even when the omega stopped breathing, nor did he look away or stop his ministrations at the cool rush of Sirius’s own patronus beside him, assurring him—help is on the way.
There was no distress coming from the omega now. In fact, he appeared to have no scent at all.
He’s dead. He’s dead. Snape’s dead, James heard his own thoughts as if from afar, and still his wand and voice did not falter, because if he faltered, it might prove true.
Help was coming.
Someone was coming.
He would only come to realise Snape was out of harm’s way after Professor Mcgonagall had given him the second—or third—calming draught.