Hurt
“Dahlia, you okay?” Harry crouched over Dahlia, who was kneeling on the ground, massaging her stomach.
“Yup, I’m fine,” she said in a breathless voice. “Winded. It’s not me that you should be worried about, it’s Severus.”
Minerva edged forward to the bed. Severus was knocked out, his face still slightly screwed up in an agonized expression, still shaking although he was obviously unconscious.
“Flashbacks must’ve fired up his emotions and increased nerve pain or something,” Dahlia said softly. “He’s still too mistrusting.”
“You’ve gotta stop that thrashing,” Remus said weakly, his face pale as he stared at Severus. The agony in his scream… that sounded so much more painful than the screams he had when he turned into a wolf… Remus didn’t think that he could ever forget them.
“I’ll tell Hippocrates,” Dahlia said, not tearing her eyes away from her patient.
“We also need to know what happened,” Kingsley said. “I suppose I should have warned him before…”
“Now you suppose,” Dahlia echoed darkly, her hand unconsciously moving to her stomach.
Forty minutes later, after Remus, Minerva, and Harry left, Dahlia sat crouched next to his bed, knitting. She’d grown rather fond of the hobby, and she played around with the yarn in her spare time.
Severus soon stirred, though, the mild Sleeping Draught he’d been injected with wearing off. He opened his eyes and blinked once, twice.
“You’re awake.” Dahlia stood and faced him. Severus looked ashen and exhausted.
“Let me out,” he rasped hoarsely. “Let me out, please. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t handle Azkaban! Please, please, let me out.”
His body seized with spasms. He didn’t even try to fight them, only staring at her with the same glazed, pained expression.
“You aren’t in Azkaban,” Dahlia soothed gently. “You’re at Hogwarts. You’re safe here. Harry is alive, and Voldemort is dead.”
“He cast Cruciatus on me,” he gasped, his working eye wild and crazy. “Fake-Kingsley. You all did, even you.”
“That was because of the amount of torture you were subjected to… the punches, kicks, and the venom, which fired up some nerve pain. And your anxiety was over the charts. Kingsley’s wand triggered some memories, probably. And he isn’t fake, he’s the real Kingsley. I promise you, Severus, we wouldn’t hurt you.”
He continued to stare at her, his face blank, hopeless, and lost. Dahlia was struck with the horrifying image of Frank and Alice Longbottom in the same position he was in, with the same expression.
Shaking that thought out of her head, she asked, “How do you like the idea of a bath, Severus?”
Severus seemed to struggle for a moment, trying to fight the feverish fog out of his head.
“Bath?”
He hadn’t had a bath in…well, three years. Sure, he was clean, but he hadn’t touched water in so long.
“Okay.”
His mind still filled with that sick, delirious doubt, Severus watched Dahlia as she moved around the room.
“Here,” she finally said, pushing around a wheelchair.
Severus grimaced, twisting his features.
But Dahlia smiled at him encouragingly and stepped to him, extending an arm.
Severus shook his head.
“I think you’ll have to lift me,” he said softly, hating himself.
She nodded, held out her arms, and then halted.
“Can I-”
Severus nodded, reckoning that he’d rather take a bath and risk the Crucio.
He still didn’t trust her fully, no matter what she said.
But he’d experienced the sudden anxiety attacks, followed by the extreme agony in his cell in Azkaban. So he knew it might not have been entirely her fault…
Still, knocking him unconscious probably didn’t increase his trust for her.
Dahlia gently lifted him up, feeling the painfully sharp jut of his bones. Then she set him on the chair and wheeled him into the bathroom inside her quarters. She filled the tub up with warm water and poured calming potions into the bathtub, and then scattered some sort of powder into the water.
“I did some research,” she explained, “and even asked pharmacy Muggles on what they recommended for pain. They told me to use Epsom salt. And then there’s lavender, rosemary, and thyme.”
Severus closed his eyes briefly, recognizing the scents. He nodded at her. At least now he knew that she wasn’t drowning him in poison.
A few minutes later, Severus nodded again, ready, and Dahlia helped him undress, manipulating his weak, disfigured limbs. He hated his appearance, loathed his looks. And now, with his muscles shriveling and his skin a sickly, yellowish color, he hated himself more than ever. The whole right side of his body was so much thinner, the muscle atrophied and barely even there, mostly just bones. He quivered with each second, his body wracking with spasms caused by too much exposure to crucio.
He had his father’s long nose. He’d been bullied relentlessly for it.
Git.
Greasy.
Ugly.
James even went so far as to describe him as, “someone so ugly that children run away from him”.
But he didn't argue when Dahlia carried him and gently set him down into the tub, startling slightly as, for the first time in years, felt someone else touch his skin, someone that meant no harm. She even let him lay there for a few seconds, breathing in the calming fragrances.
Dahlia started with his hair, massaging his scalp slowly. After putting in the conditioner and brushing it out, she rubbed the body wash on his body, feeling the slow tremors that wracked him.
He was thin, too thin. She wondered if he ate in Azkaban, or if he was allowed to, or if he couldn’t. In the few days with her, Severus only ate a few bites of his food. He claimed it still hurt to eat, hurt to swallow, to talk, to even move.
Severus thought that it hurt to live.
There was a constellation of scars that painted a night sky on his torso. Some were from his father.
Most were from Lord Voldemort.
Dahlia’s eyes traced the words on his arms, so similar to the Mudblood scar on Hermione’s arm.
Severus didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were closed. He looked, for the first time in so many years, peaceful and content. Maybe because he was still drugged with fever, and it slowed his mind down. Maybe it was because Dahlia, the woman he, well, loved, was next to him. Maybe because, in the warm water and the fragrances of the herbs, it reminded him of being back in his stuffy potions lab.
But whatever it was because of, Severus was content.
He hardly noticed as Dahlia quickly moved down his body, down from his hips and finally to his feet. He hardly noticed as Dahlia smiled gently, hoping that after some rest, his paranoia would die down and that he’d finally trust her.