help me
As Severus walked past the room, he had placed the boy in, he couldn’t help peering in, Poppy had told him the sleep potion she had given him would hopefully keep the boy sleeping for at least 12 hours, and considering it was only just coming up for five since he had taken the potion, Severus couldn’t push down the unwelcome feeling of something like concern for the child. Quickly dismissing this unwelcome feeling as merely fatigue (the child had kept him up for coming on to 16 hours now), he pushed the door open just enough for him to observe a bundle of sheets surrounding the child’s ankles, whist the child himself tossed and turned, a thin layer of sweat covering his forehead. Snape swore quietly under his breath. His mind immediately considering all the reactions potter could have had to the potions Poppy had given to him, but none could have the adverse reaction the boy was clearly experiencing.
He rushed over to the bed, unsure of what he was ging to do once he got there but needing to be close to the distressed child nevertheless.
“Potter?” he called.
“Potter wake up child”.
“POTTER!”
In hindsight Severus would have been the first one to admit that maybe yelling at a distressed child who was in an unfamiliar setting, after just discovering he had been severely abused may not have been the best course of action, however, it’s what he did.
The boy shot upwards, sweat covering his brow and dripping down his temples, he looked around frantic, eyes screwing shut when he saw the potions professor.
“Bloody merlin’s motherfucking shit balls” Severus swore fluently under his breath, that potion was designed to keep the boy asleep for nearly 12 hours so he could regrow his bones painlessly, now he was awake he was sure to be in an immense amount of pain.
Sure enough, after trying to pull himself up into a sitting position, Severus saw the child’s face contort in agony as he put pressure on his right hand.
He let out a startingly pained moan and immediately flopped back down onto the mattress, still shying away when Severus approached him.
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“POTTER!”
The yell radiated through Harry’s brain, and he was awake in an instant, tensed and ready for the inevitable smack that was awaiting him, because a yell that loud could never, ever entail something even vaguely good.
His eyes searched the darkened room, mind still foggy from being awakened from his sleep, meaning he was still unaware of where he was and who he was with.
His eyes stopped searching when they found the menacingly dak figure, standing an arm’s length away from his bed. As he sat there, not moving a muscle, whilst his eyes adapted to the darkness in the room, Harry’s breathing quickened as he realised who the figure in his room was, and with a rush of dread, remembered why he was there in the first place.
Without thinking he tried to pull himself up onto the bed, immediately halting his progress when he put pressure on his hand and an immediate pain was sent rocketing up his right arm. He let out a sound he ordinarily would have been mortified for snape to hear. A sound of pain. A sound of weakness.
But in that moment, he was way to caught up in his pain to even acknowledge it, he had been subjected to Tom’s crucio three times a mere 2 weeks ago and yet this pain, didn’t match, but came very close to that same feeling.
He immediately screwed his eyes shut and whimpered to himself.
He wasn’t unaware enough however, to see the figure approaching him out of the corner of his eyes and immediately attempted to scoot back as far as he could on his mattress without falling of the bed.
“Po- Harry” snape said to him.
“Breathe child” there was an almost pleading tone in that normally cold, hard voice, which coupled with the use of his given name made him glance up apprehensively, only to be met with a worried look being ineffectively hidden on the potion master’s usually concerningly stoic face.
“c- can’t, h- h- hurts” he managed to gasp out, unable to stop the embarrassing shake that his voice held, he merely hoped that Snape wouldn’t notice his evident weakness.
“Wait here child, I will fetch Poppy, you will feel better imminently, I have no doubt” and again, he was gone in a swish of his coat, an action Harry probably would have found amusing if it wasn’t for the continued agony, he was in.
He didn’t know how long it had been since Snape had left but the relief when there was a knock at the door and Madam Pomphrey bustled in was insane. The prolonged pain he was in making him sure he was dying, hell, it made him wish he was dying.
“H- h- he- help me” he whispered, cringing at how weak he sounded.
“it’s ok dear, it’ll all be ok, I’m going to top up the sleep potion you were under and you’ll be right as rain” the matron said kindly, but halted her progress at the anguished yell the frail child in front of her released.
“NO. no, no no no no no no no no, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t”
“Harry” Poppy said, shocked, whatever is it?”
“I was stuck!” the boy cried “I couldn’t wake up!”
A realisation dawned on Severus suddenly, and looking at Madam Pomphrey’s evident confusion, the same thought had not occurred to the women.
“Poppy” Severus started, not unkindly, “did you give the boy dreamless sleep?”
The ashamed look on poppy’s face told him all he needed to go, and he rushed up the stairs to retrieve the bottle he keeps on his bedside for difficult nights.
On returning downstairs he found Poppy explaining that the sleep potion she had given him only kept him asleep and didn’t stop his dreams from taking place but assuring him the next one wouldn’t allow him any unnecessary fear or dreams, leaving him a relaxed 6 hours of sleep.
The boy nodded warily, and rank the vial Severus offered without question, casing the man to raise his eyebrows as there was evidently some level of trust the boy help for him if he was willing to drink the offered potion so quickly and without hesitation. And the child was asleep before his head touched the pillow.
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“Severus, even without dreamless sleep, Harry should not have been as distressed as you described to me, whilst that potion doesn’t remove dreams, it mutes them. I’m scared Severus. If he was that panicked on muted dreams, how must he be normally.”
Severus looked at the motherly women with a mixture of shock and understanding. He had never heard the women admit she was scared before, but he understood where she was coming from. The boy was evidently not in a good head space. Unsurprisingly really, if you consider what he’d been through, but his ordeals never really seemed to affect him all that much.
Unless Severus had missed the signs of a struggling child, like so many people had missed the signs in hm when he was a child.
‘Well, shit’ he thought to himself as he said goodbye to the Hogwarts matron again. He had found himself in temporary charge of not only the ‘chosen one’ but an obviously traumatised teenager.
And honestly, he had no idea what he was going to do.