Chapter 2
Severus blasted more spores than he'd care to count on the way to his apprentice.
As he drew nearer, however, the spores seemed to only attack with more vehemence, and in a way he couldn't quite understand—
They focused less on him, and more on that cheetah-like beast presumably shielding his student.
It was most curious, so when he had a moment to spare after blasting a particularly large spore that oozed something disgusting, he sent a thread of magic to feel out the creature.
What he received in return stilled him longer than was wise.
His student's magic emanated from the construct in waves, and the spores were naturally drawn to it.
Well, Severus thought as he regained his composure, that explained the creature defending Rigel, at least. He'd likely given his magic some kind of form and instructed it to protect him.
Severus didn't know how he felt about that— on one hand, it was the distinctive kind of genius that Rigel had in spades, and on the other…
It sounded a bit too close to his Lord's more teenage pastimes.
He finally reached just outside the circumference of the Fortis bubble, and kept an eye on his student even as he reduced more spores to dust.
Rigel lay crumpled on the ground, eyes not quite shut but glazed, and his avatar shook with tremors. Severus bit back concern and instead focused on projecting intent towards the boy's core-turned-construct.
It went against everything Severus had been taught about magic, but he had come to believe the boy when he said his magic possessed a degree of sentience. There were only so many instances he could ignore that blatantly supported it.
This time, he chose to rely on it.
He locked eyes with the construct, flashing memories of countless days spent by a cauldron with company, of fond eyes and little smiles his apprentice managed to steal from him. He shared with it his despair, his worry for the boy he considered his protégé, his child, and he shared with it his wish to help.
It was as though a looming presence against Severus loosened, and Severus relaxed in the absence of pressure he hadn't even noticed was weighing on him. His student's magic, clearly, had not trusted him fully before this.
He ignored the ambiguous feelings that thought produced and focused on what was important. He had made the right choice.
“Let me take the boy to safety.” He told it, and ruby eyes searched his pitch black with surprising intelligence. “You are tied up protecting him, here, and he needs medical attention in more ways than one.”
The construct inclined his head for the briefest of seconds, and Severus wrapped his magic around Rigel protectively just as the Fortis collapsed on itself.
Protecting its owner had clearly been wearing on the boy's construct, for the moment Rigel safety had been assured, it wreaked havoc on the spores with an almost alarming vengeance.
Reassured that it was more than capable of flushing the drought in due time, Severus cut a path through the potion-infected landscape and towards the heart of the boy's wintry mountain.
He took him below the trapdoor, trying not to think about the last time he had been here and the startling difference in the state of the boy he now carried in his arms. Rigel would be making no cheeky comments, this time.
Once sufficiently deep in the maze that no spores had penetrated yet, he laid the boy down and quickly took stock of the situation.
He was on a time limit, he knew. Already, he could feel a slow heat enveloping Rigel's mindscape, and knew his fifteen minutes would be up sooner than he liked. A mindscape with a healing fever brooked no outsider's company.
He gazed at the boy even as his magic purged his avatar of the draughts's delirious effects with some difficulty.
It was indirect and uncomfortable, trying to heal a wizard's body through their avatar. While it bore some resemblance and link to their physical form, it was detached, and the theory behind it was more occult than most. Despite his less than stellar knowledge of healing, it was Severus' unique and powerful knowledge of the mind arts that made him one of the few in Britain who could even attempt it with some level of accuracy.
It was all too important that the boy wake up before Severus had to leave, and a simple Innervate wouldn't cut it. Healing comas did not exactly have a good survival rate when the subject had powerful magic. But Severus had felt the boy's stuttering heartbeat, witnessed his horrifying convulsions and inability to breathe, and knew he had to take a chance no matter how bleak the prospects. His student, in the condition he had been back out in the field, would not have survived even the hour.
Poppy's attempts at healing without the proper, required knowledge given by diagnostic charms had been a weak balm of reassurance at best, for there was absolutely no way to ascertain the boy's actual state beyond a vague feeling.
This way, at least, Severus knew the boy had a chance. And he would do everything in his power to raise the probability of a fulsome recovery for Rigel.
Which led directly to his current attempts: help the boy regain consciousness, at the very least in his mindscape, for the side-effects of the ravaging fever were said to decrease by a whopping one-fourth if the patient was awake in their mindscape, however delirious, and by half if they retained consciousness in the real world throughout the process.
He poured more magic into the boy's avatar with urgency, feeling a pressing heat enveloping him. His heart beat so very loudly, and Severus had to wonder if he wasn't imagining it, this sensation of panic tempered with caution, for he was usually adept at controlling his emotional state—
The boy wheezed, groaned, and then buried himself in the folds of Severus’ robes. His growing fear, having held him in a tight, unrelenting clasp, eased in the space of a breath.
“Rigel,” he hated how desperate he sounded, how weak— “Get up, boy. You must."
Rigel's eyes, which had never really closed, seemed to regain a sheen of intelligence.
“Sn-Smape?”
Severus ignored the butchering of his name, “Yes, child. It's me. You must wake up now. Time is running out.”
The boy's face contorted, and Severus watched with alarm and helplessness as tears streamed down Rigel's face.
“Time is al-always running out. Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock. I'm just borrowing more of it from the future, so I can live in my secrets. I keep borrowing things. Name, eyes, while the basilisk gets just the one.” the boy paused, “Except when time is too long, too slow. Then I have to make it slower for the potion.”
Severus couldn't make much sense of the boy's mumbling. He had the vaguest sense that somewhere in there, the boy had been referencing the time-turner. The rest, though? Live in my secrets?Borrowing things. Name. Eyes. The bit about the basilisk had clearly been a revisit to the boy's less than fond memories. But what about making an already slower time— that was probably the reference to the time turner —even more slow for a potion? Was that about the boy's illicit brewing in his lab? Severus maintained plausible deniability towards his actions, if only to keep him brewing in some abandoned broom cupboard without supervision.
Suspicion bloomed and took root like an ache in his temple. Had he not once… suspected the boy of taking polyjuice, in his third year? Did he not think Rigel's access to a time-turner would make such a feat all too convenient? But then—
He focused on the student lying weak with his head on his lap. Rigel looked so, so tired. As though this vague, concerning conversation with Severus was all that was keeping him awake.
Panic threatened to take hold once more, and Severus shoved aside his suspicions to lean closer and lift Rigel’s chin.
Their eyes met, and he reassured himself by asserting that he looked considerably sharper than before.
Severus felt a distant pressure that alerted him to someone shaking him in the physical world. He cupped the boy's face in his hands.
“Rigel, you must wake up,” Severus said, staring into his face with his most no-nonsense expression, the one that promised infinite detentions and cruel punishments if tested. It brought a little more recognition into the boy's eyes. “You want to make it out of this alive, yes?”
The boy made an odd, almost hysterical sound in his throat, then nodded.
“Wake up, then,” Severus said, voice thick and gruff with suppressed emotion, “I need to leave. If you desire any company at all, you will put your brilliant mind to regaining consciousness.”
Poppy's shaking grew more urgent.
“I must go,” Severus repeated, half to convince himself, and shot the boy a stern look that conveyed more vulnerability than he liked, “Follow after. Do not leave me behind.”
Alone. Alone, in this desolate world that never understood me half as well as you did.
He let the boy go with reluctance, and just as the heat pressing against him grew unbearable, he opened his eyes to the real world.
“Oh for Merlin's sake, Severus—!” Poppy looked on the verge of rage, “Do you know how risky it could have gotten?!” Severus wondered idly if this was how he'd seemed to Rigel, those last few minutes in the boy's mindscape. He certainly hoped so: Poppy cut an intimidating figure, and Severus had an almost forced resolve to not test her patience again.
Perhaps it would be similar for the boy. Severus had tried pleading, begging, wearing his heart out and then letting a cool veneer take over, until there was only ordering his apprentice to return to him.
Ignoring the rest of Poppy's rant, he turned hopeful eyes to the child in bed before him. Soon enough, she did the same.
He was all that mattered, Severus realised with streaking, painful realisation, He was all that had mattered to me for four years.
If anything were to happen to him, Severus wouldn't know what to do with himself. Besides murdering Riddle, but that he would do anyways. This task— no, this torture, had taken him well beyond the limits of what he was willing to tolerate.
As though aware of the dark turn his mentor’s thoughts had taken, Rigel shifted. His eyes pinched themselves tightly shut, but then fluttered and lifted with difficulty.
A small, weak smile graced his lips.
“Hello, Professor.” his voice was dry, a thread close to breaking, and Poppy summoned some water.
Severus’ hand moved without his conscious input, reaching out to stroke the boy's cheek.
Was this real?Had his worst fears not been realised, after all?
His lips curved up in a semblance of Rigel's: tremulous, tired, yet all too relieved.
His hand caught the back of Rigel's head, and he pressed the child against his chest in an embrace he couldn't believe was real.
It had been so, so close.
“You foolish boy, you are in so much trouble,” Severus said, failing at aiming for his usual tone.
Rigel let out a weak but winning laugh, “At your service, sir.”