Jehane Desrosiers

The rack of bottled Celldeath potion disappeared that Sunday. It was in the house somewhere, and I knew he was taking it because the bottle was washed and left by the sink every night. Clearly, it was meant to be a private matter.

I expected that Severus would not allow himself the needed rest until exhaustion brought him to his knees. It turned out that Clepe had overestimated the time it would take.

For three days, Severus resumed his duties -- planning, delegating, monitoring and overseeing staff with single-minded intensity, as if he could ward off the side effects of Celldeath potion by sheer concentration. Minerva stood aside gladly, but he kept her close with a running narrative of his plans and activities.

Avoiding the subject seemed to be part of the plan. Of course it was impossible not to think of it, especially when I returned from teaching and found him sprawled on the living room couch, eyes closed. Until that moment I had never seen Severus take a rest in the middle of a work day.

“Oh,” I said, trying not to sound alarmed. “Is it starting to tire you out?

“Has started,” he answered in a low voice. “I’ll just close my eyes for a moment, then I have a meeting with Flourish and Blotts.”

“Why don’t you -- “ I began, but he was asleep. I crept quietly to the kitchen fireplace and alerted Minerva by Floo.

She was quite firm about leaving him be. “He’s not to come up here for something like Flourish and Blotts,” she said briskly. “I’ll meet with the man, and if he needs Severus in person, he’ll have to come back. It’s just alterations in the Divination syllabus they’re concerned about; in my opinion, no need to trouble Headmaster about it in the first place.”

He dragged himself off the couch two hours later and returned to school as I watched anxiously with Albia holding on to my knees. He did not scold me for letting him sleep.

Next day he made it to the castle but was back on the couch when I stopped in before lunch, pale as milk with dark circles under his eyes. A pile of parchment rested on the floor by his boots.

I rose early Friday to the sound of Albia talking to herself in her room. She was casting spells with a toy wand, charmed to light up when she waved it. I took her downstairs with me and made coffee, then brought Severus a mug in bed. He struggled to sit up.

“Stop,” I said firmly. “Save your energy for tormenting the staff.” I bossed him to cover my discomfort while I pulled him upright and stuffed a pillow behind his back. “You’ll just have to stay in bed this morning. I’ll bring you some horrible paperwork to do.” I handed him the coffee. He took a small sip, shuddered, and handed it back. “Let me bring you scrambled eggs.” He shook his head, white around the nostrils, then gazed at the ceiling miserably. “Okay, maybe later.” He turned his face away, embarrassed and furious.

I left him with a pile of job applications for the DADA position on the night stand and an admonition to keep to his bed. Albia was to spend the day in Hagrid’s company, and was eager to be off. I told Severus I’d see him after my class.

It was a good morning of teaching. I lost myself in the children, the animals and the glorious weather, blustery late March with cloud castles scudding through the empyrean heights. Libby Wateringcan was turning out to be a gifted young rider, as serious and intuitive as her older sister was silly. My older class was in an unusually cooperative and focused state as well, and I fairly much forgot my worries for the morning.

I returned to my lovely house, the Headmaster’s House, covered with Virginia creeper still reddish from the Fall, its windows gleaming and its front walk showing pillows of moss between the flags. All would be well. I called out to Severus as I came in the front door, without reply. Sleeping, I thought, and good for him. I put on the kettle and went upstairs to check.

The bed was empty. The stack of job applications had spilled onto the floor. The covers were rucked up, with Severus’ pyjamas strewn on top. Most alarming was the potions bottle lying on the floor, a drop of red liquid pooled in its neck.

I canceled my afternoon classes by Floo and turned off the kettle. Heading toward the castle I struggled not to break into a run. Severus and I did not normally keep track of each other during the day, but having left him in his sickbed, I expected to find him there. He would certainly get a piece of my mind about this. He wasn’t in the Headmaster’s study or the staff room. I called Minerva briefly out of her class; she hadn’t seen him.

“Look,” I said. “Please don’t make a fuss or ask around. I’m sure he’s crept off somewhere and wants to be ignored.” I kept my voice casual, but cold sweat ran down my sides. I thought of how my old cat Mimi, sick with an infected ear, had crawled into the space under our shed, keeping to herself until she died.

“Of course,” she said. “But do alert me when you’ve run him down.” I nodded.

He had gone to earth in the potions lab. There were no classes at this hour and I found him lying on a bench. He had been vomiting into a pan and could barely raise his head.

“You’re shivering. This is a hell of a place for a sickroom,” I said mildly, placing a warming spell on him.

“I --” But he gagged again. I held his head and smoothed his hair back as dry heaves wracked him.

“Come home,” I said. “I need you.”

“What good --” He coughed and heaved again.

“My husband is very ill and it frightens me. I need to have you nearby because your presence comforts me. Please come home, Severus.” In truth, it did frighten me to see him so helpless, and something else besides that I didn’t want to examine.

He nodded with a desperate look in his dull eyes. His skin was yellowish and dry, his pale lips cracked.

“I know you don’t like it, but it’s either Mobilicorpus or Facio Levis. Which?”

“Second.”

When I had done the spell, I could pull him upright and carry him as if he were a large balloon. I’d never been under this spell, but it is said to feel queer. Severus seemed too drained to notice.

When we had built it, he had insisted the Headmaster’s house have a tunnel to the dungeons and I was glad of it now for privacy’s sake. Nothing obvious marked it, but I had managed to remember which stone in the outside wall of the dungeon formed the key. Getting him through the low tunnel, however, was like carrying an inflatable raft through the underbrush; I scraped or bumped him several times. Finally we pushed through the winter cloaks in the front hall closet. I sealed the door behind us, took him right upstairs and laid him in bed. He was too ill even to make snide remarks as I released the spell, took off his boots and helped him undress, keeping up a distracting narrative.

“It will be over soon,” I said. “Just a few weeks and you’ll begin to get strong again. Relax your hand, sweetheart, the sleeve is stuck. Accio water glass. Take tiny sips.” I held the glass for him. Although he had nothing left to throw up, I moved a stack of books from his night stand and set a bowl there.

“Damn it,” he muttered with his eyes closed.

“Right.” I took off my robes and jeans and climbed in next to him in my shirt. “Roll over. I’ll keep you warm. Try to sleep.” I snuggled up behind him and threw my arm over his waist.

We both slept, to my surprise. I had been so frightened that I welcomed the comfort of holding him safe in my arms. When I woke it was late afternoon, the light slanting through our high bedroom windows. I watched his tense, haggard face. It was dreadfully hard for him to place himself in my hands, to reveal himself in his weakness and need -- perhaps harder than anything I had ever done for him. I touched his eyelids tenderly with my fingertips. My love had not been enough to win my father to me or save Guy. Perhaps it would fail here, too. For this one moment, though, it was enough, and that gave me peace.

There was no more nonsense about keeping up my teaching after that. It had been a silly idea in the first place, a useless distraction from my fear. The younger students were dismissed from classes for the duration and the older ones given free riding periods under the direction of Pierce and his friend Mayblossom Buckley.

Severus stayed in bed. I nursed him as unsentimentally as possible. He could tolerate broth if he kept his head on the pillow so I fed it to him every hour, by way of a spill-proof spoon. He swallowed it without enjoyment. His cheeks were hollow and the flesh hung loosely on his already slender limbs.

Every afternoon Hagrid came to the door with rock cakes or leathery pancakes or a stew of dubious origins. His legendary bad cooking brought tears of appreciation to my eyes and I ate every bit. Each day after I brought the dish inside, he pulled me into a bear hug. “Yeh’ll get ‘im through, I don’t doubt it. Take care of yerself as well,” he said.

I did practically nothing, but every dragging hour wore me down. Seeing Severus so debilitated, agonizing about his prognosis, feeling for him at those moments when he surfaced enough to let me see his misery -- these painful passages drained the energy from me. Except for walking Albia to Hagrid’s hut or to meet whichever student was sitting her for the day, I stayed in the house.

The worst part of each day was the potion. The rack of bottles had been transfigured into a tea cannister on the kitchen counter and then somehow warded so that I did not notice it. Severus had to change it back, and from then on I left it in the ice box.

I couldn’t bear to announce it to him. I brought it silently upstairs at one o’clock every day. As I entered, his sunken eyes flashed a plea, instantly extinguished, to be spared.

“Ah,” he whispered in a cracked voice. “The afternoon libations.”

The first time, I had offered him the bottle itself. The initial swig had brought on a round of vomiting so violent that I’d barely caught the bottle in midair. Potion was splattered on the bed, the floor and the front of my robes as if a bloody murder had occurred.

“Sorry,” Severus panted weakly from his position hanging over the edge of the bed.

After that I held on to the bottle and Severus lay absolutely still, head on the pillow, as I spooned minute quantities into the corner of his mouth with the same enchanted spoon. It helped to keep the potion chilled almost to freezing. Still, he would raise his finger to stop me frequently as he fought to keep it down. It didn’t always work.

I wanted to ask Clepe about this and other things, but by the time I’d got Albia to bed I was too exhausted to contact him. I’d crawl into a cot next to Severus, clean my teeth with a spell, and fall into a dreamless sleep.

Late Saturday afternoon I sat in the easy chair by the bed, holding Severus’ hand. He lay still, eyes closed, but not sleeping.

A short knock sounded on the front door. Our Floo was open to all our friends, so I assumed it was a student or Hagrid, who couldn’t fit through the fireplace and didn’t like to put me to the trouble of stretching it.

It was Clepe, smiling kindly and holding a basket over his arm. I felt a rush of relief, and to my embarrassment, my eyes filled and spilled over.

“Come in,” I said, laughing with the tears. “I’m glad to see you.” A little sob escaped me, and as he entered I turned my back. He patted me on the shoulder, but left me a moment to collect myself. When I could face him again, he spoke.

“Have you been doing this alone?”

I nodded.

“Why haven’t you had any help?” he asked.

“He’s so private,” I said. “He wouldn’t want anyone to see him.”

“Bugger. It’s not fair to you. Anyway, I’m here for the weekend -- Hogsmeade, I mean -- so I can spell you, and it will give me a chance to examine my patient. How has he been doing?” I motioned him to the couch and sat down in the chair facing.

“We’re doing everything as directed, but sometimes he throws up, all or part of it. All he can eat is broth, and he looks like hell.”

“Why didn’t you owl me?”

“I --” It wasn’t completely true that I hadn’t had time; I certainly could have dashed off a quick note while Severus slept. I had reverted to the same desperate self-sufficiency that had sustained me after Guy’s death. And if, in memory, I traveled far back enough, I knew I would see it in the fifteen year old who rebuilt her life in a stable, and perhaps in a little girl watching foxes from a solitary perch in a tree. I shook my head. “Foolish. I will next time.”

“Please. Oh, and here are a few things I thought might help.” He reached into the basket and withdrew a tall bottle of ginger-colored liquid. “I guessed Professor Snape might have neglected to brew an anti-emetic of adequate strength. This is my own formulation -- boa constrictor and mandrake as well as Venus flytrap. I’m terrified of his opinion, but I’ve had good success with it. An ounce, fifteen minutes before he takes the Celldeath.”

“An anti-emetic. I hadn’t thought of it. Thank you very much.”

He continued to rummage in the basket.

“I made you a loaf of bread. And this is honey from my bees.”

“Your bees!” I said. “You are a strange kind of healer. Aren’t you always at St. Mungo’s, working day and night like the other specialists?”

“I am a strange kind of everything,” he said ruefully. “And I do have time for the things I like.”

I led the way to our bedroom, calling out softly, “Severus, Clepe is here to see you.”

Severus lay on his back like an effigy on a tomb, eyes closed, face carved with lines of strain. His hair, a matted mess of black and silver, lay lifelessly on the pillow.

“Caduceus,” he drawled faintly. “Forgive me if I fail to rise.” Nor did he open his eyes.

“How are you feeling, Professor Snape?”

“How do I look?”

“Like the picture of Dorian Gray,” Clepe answered.

“I assume you speak of the portrait and not the eponymous volume.”

“Oh, the portrait, I assure you,” said Clepe. “You do not look nearly as well as the book.” He took the chair by the bed and lifted Severus’ hand. He held it between his own for a several minutes with an abstracted look, reading his patient’s condition by some means like Legilimency. “Mm. You do like a walk on the wild side, don’t you?”

“My life has been dull of late,” Severus rasped. “Since I settled down.”

“Phoenix feather and mummy dust, and the aconite on top of it. Stronger against you than I thought. It’s a wonder you can even speak.” Severus nodded slightly.

Clepe turned to me. “The potion is extremely effective. The malignancy is practically gone.” I saw Severus’ free hand clench against the coverlet and my heart gave a joyful leap.

He turned to Severus. “But Professor Snape, you will need to reduce the dose, or we’ll lose the patient. I’m sorry. It must be half the current dose for the next two weeks, until you’ve completed it.”

Two more weeks. From the bitter expression on Severus’ face, I knew he and I struggled with the same disappointment.

“I’ll just get a few things and be back in twenty minutes,” said Clepe, rising from the chair. As the door closed behind him I flew to my husband and gathered him into my arms.

“It’s only two weeks. It’s nothing,” I sobbed. “It’s nothing compared to our whole lives.” He groaned. “It’s nothing.”

He was like a bundle of sticks in my embrace, and I pressed his head into the hollow of my neck as if he were a child. Suddenly all my fear of the weeks before crashed over me and I wept and wept. I realized that I’d hardly touched him since he’d become so weak, afraid of hurting him perhaps.

Weak as he was, he threaded his skinny arms around my back and held me and when I’d stopped gibbering enough to hear him, it was my name he whispered, over and over.

Notes

The weight reduction spell is borrowed from Bernice. Her marvelous Snagrid stories can be found at http://www.sweetandsour.netfirms.com/archive.htm (warning: slash!).

Thank you to Delphi for her Latin translations throughout.