Chapter Text
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
-Marcel Proust
Severus carefully tilted the vial of powdered aniseed over his bubbling cauldron. He tapped the glass lightly, measuring by sight as the brown powder sifted out. It had been years since he’d needed to use any measuring spoons in his potions, and he’d thus forgotten where he put them, but this particular potion could be temperamental. The sound of his doorbell ringing shrilly in his basement lab nearly startled him into dumping the entire vial into the cauldron and he thanked every deity that he had also learned immense control. Setting down the vial, he made the appropriate alternating half-circle stirs with the wooden rod, ignoring the sound of his bell going off again. Whoever dared disturb him at his home could bloody well wait.
When the sound of the bell continued, no longer ringing with any pause in-between, he growled in frustration and put the potion in stasis. Storming up the steps, he moved to his front door with a scowl that could curdle new milk. He opened the door on an out of breath Remus Lupin and regretted immensely ever having given the man access to the wards around his home, at Albus’ insistence of course.
“What, Wolf?!” He snarled dangerously.
Lupin gasped, clearly trying to fill his lungs. “Severus… have to… come… Grimmauld… Harry…” He wheezed desperately.
Severus felt the color drain out of his face as he immediately moved onto the stoop, closing and warding the door with a flick of his wrist. Without waiting for the werewolf, he started down the crumbling concrete path, through his overgrown yard, to the street where he could apparate. Potter wasn’t due to be brought from his relatives’ for another few days. Only the very worst could have caused Albus to slacken his rules regarding the young man. And only the worst of that would have brought Lupin to his door in such a state.
If Potter was at Grimmauld and needed his help, then it could mean only one thing. He just prayed that the Wizarding Savior hadn’t been attacked at his home. He hated Petunia, who no doubt spoiled the arrogant son of her only sister, but he didn’t wish to see her dead.
As he reached the street, he twisted sharply on his heel with a soft crack, landing in the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld. Even without Black around to wreak havoc with his self-control, he had hoped to avoid ever coming back here now that the war was very nearly ended. There were still a number of Death Eaters, most hiding in plain sight, who hadn’t yet been given up in the trials the Ministry was conducting, but attacks had slackened immensely.
Aside from the Inner Circle, though, the Dark Lord had always been infuriatingly careful about who knew how many Death Eaters there really were, never mind who they were. Severus had willingly given the names he knew, but he was very aware that it was a paltry few, as was the Ministry, who’d have had him in prison no matter what role he’d played if Potter and Albus hadn’t spoken on his behalf. God only knew why the self-involved brat had bothered, beyond incurring a debt from him.
Walking quickly, Severus moved up through the house. He wished he’d waited for Lupin, as he had no way of knowing where Potter was, or even who else was in the house. He was relieved, but only very slightly, when he found Albus pacing worriedly outside of one of the bedrooms on the second floor. Twinkling blue eyes turned to him, and naked relief showed on his mentor’s face.
“Severus, thank Merlin.” The aged Headmaster turned and led the way immediately into what could only be Potter’s room just as the Potions Master heard Lupin thundering up the stairs behind him.
He followed Albus into the dimly lit room. Potter was lying prone on the large bed at the opposite wall, his chest heaving shallowly, his brow furrowed. Worried more than he would ever admit, Severus approached the unconscious war hero. He gasped at what he saw as he drew closer. The young body, shirtless and extremely malnourished, was riddled with bruises and lacerations and new and old scars. His ribs poked out of his emaciated torso, at least one evidently broken. His left arm had been poorly patched, no doubt by the talentless werewolf, but Severus could see that the loose bandage was stained red, and the bandage failed to fully cover what looked to be a deep, gravely infected gash that almost certainly trailed from the back of Potter’s wrist to his elbow.
The ragged and torn jeans were stained with new and old blood, pale feet marred by what could only be bite marks from an animal and two broken toes. Swallowing thickly, Severus let his eyes trail back up the broken body to the familiar face currently twisted into an unconscious grimace of pain. There was a deep bruise on his cheek and a split lip, but it seemed like every other depravity was lost under the sight of what rested a few inches beneath the clenched jaw.
Around the sickly pale throat was an angry ring of red that even now seeped streaks of blood. Whatever had been there had worn completely through the skin in a solid ring. Claw marks from Potter scrabbling at this unknown collar were faded and scabbed. At some point, the Gryffindor had stopped trying to get it loose. Before he could stop it, Severus’ pale hand reached out to rest against a clammy cheek. Closed eyes flinched, Potter’s face turning into the warmth of his palm.
“What the hell happened?” Severus demanded gruffly, ignoring how his own voice cracked as he rounded on his friend and employer. Lupin, too, had reached the doorway beyond Albus, bent double and gasping for air, staring with concern at the unmoving body on the bed. The Potions Master met the grief-stricken azure gaze of Albus and struggled to maintain his calm in the face of the sheer guilt present on the wizened features. “Death Eaters didn’t do this. Half the bruises are already healing, as are some of the cuts, and he’s clearly been starved. Some of these scars are as old as he is. He’s been tortured, for apparently years! Who the hell did this to him?”
Albus shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid I underestimated how much Petunia and her husband disliked Harry. When Remus came in search of me because he’d failed to receive Harry’s weekly letter for a second time… I found him like this, unconscious in their back garden, chained to a post in the ground. I was so sure it couldn’t be as bad as Harry implied.”
Severus felt his whole world suddenly tilt on its axis. Potter hadn’t needed rescuing at his relatives’, but from his relatives. So much that Severus had ignored, that he’d known previously and dismissed, suddenly clicked into place. Potter’s memories, his size, his eagerness to please. Severus’ own memories of Lily’s older sister should have been enough to dissuade his assumptions.
How could he have been so foolish? Petunia had hated both magic and her sister. What the hell had convinced him she would pamper the child of both? He turned back to the young man as guilt and horror struck him deeply. What level of callous stupidity had he suffered all these years? What had he been thinking? What had he done?
“I’ll need to return to my home to gather the necessary supplies,” he said finally, trying his best to sound stoic as his heart ached in his chest and the leashed demon in his soul howled for the blood of the monsters who’d done this. Potter needed his help right now. They couldn’t bring him to Hogwarts in such a state, not without it making the front page inevitably, and Poppy wasn’t an Order member, she had no access to Grimmauld. “It will take several days to properly heal him, and I have no idea if he’ll wake in that time.”
“Of course, Severus,” Albus answered softly.
The Potions Master shot a dark look at the Headmaster he usually idolized. If he had been foolish, then the old wizard had been entirely blind. He disapparated where he stood, hoping in his secret heart that the sound might wake the comatose savior. When he returned several minutes later, it was to discover that Potter, apparently, hadn’t so much as stirred. Albus and Lupin had gone, their raised voices dully echoing from the ground floor, and he carried his bag into Potter’s bedroom.
Guilt and worry gnawing at his stomach, he set to work healing the Gryffindor, easing potions down his throat and gently lathering each infected cut and contusion on the naked torso with a bruise-laceration salve. He found further damage on the Wizarding Savior’s back, where the skin had been flayed open almost completely by a whip of some kind. Holding the limp body against his chest with a gentle hand burrowed in unruly black hair, he gently skated his salve-covered fingers across the myriad lacerations that would scar horribly thanks to their time untended and the minor infections the emaciated form couldn’t have hoped to fight off. It was as close as he could bring himself to the reassuring embrace he selfishly needed on his own behalf as Potter unconsciously leaned his face into his neck.
It took a heroic, Gryffindor level of courage to remove the torn and ragged jeans, where he found even more damage. Aside from the bruises and welts, there were a number of puncture wounds on the pale legs where a dog or several had bitten him, tearing into his flesh. Wincing, Severus went about the task of sterilizing and healing these wounds as well, half of which were still bleeding thanks to a dark infection that refused to let them close. Dogs. And Potter had been tied up like he was one of them. A quick magical scan told him that Potter had at least been spared one form of abuse and wouldn’t need some of the more… intimate salves.
Shuddering, replacing the ragged jeans, Severus found himself sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed again as his hand swept through untamable black hair before cupping the pale, clammy cheek a second time. Even unconscious, Potter’s head again shifted into the touch with a light, pained moan. God, what he had wrought on this young man. What the hell had he been thinking?
The starvation, broken bones, and the grievous gash would take the longest to heal, and eventually Severus settled into a conjured chair beside the bed to wait, and to think. He would have to remain, at least for the first few days, to ensure the young man didn’t develop a fever, or, God forbid, gangrene from the open wound in his arm. The wolf’s crude wrapping had hidden from view that the gash was septic and much worse than he’d initially believed.
Guilt continued to gnaw at his innards, a rabid tearing at his blackened soul as he stared in wonder at the young man he should never have hated. Potter had done so much for him and the world, and they’d just left him to his agony each summer. For ten years before that he’d been left entirely to rot in hell, no rescue in sight. They- he had never bothered to look behind that smiling face so like his father’s. What the hell had he been thinking? What else had he missed in his blind, misplaced hatred?