Chapter Text
The weight of his free shoulder shoved open the door. It slammed loudly, undoubtedly echoing throughout the dungeon corridors, but anyone who would have snuck upon them would likely have made their presence known already. The man stumbled into the classroom, not quite dragging and not quite carrying a woman toward his desk. He tried to shake his long black hair out of his face, but his jagged movements kept bringing it back. His sallow skin and dark eyes cast ominous shadows across his face. Even his robes, also of purest black, seemed to envelop the world around him in darkness.
The half-lucid woman clung to him while her arms tensed and relaxed. She could not be more unlike him in appearance. Sapphire eyes caught what little light existed in the room even while struggling to focus. Her golden hair still maintained itself in a loose braid. Her lithe body seemed impossibly fragile, though much of that was due to her state. Beneath the silver and blue outer cloak, which had unwrapped itself in their haste toward the office, barely concealed her white Victorian nightgown.
He sat her on the edge of his desk. “Can you sit upright?” he asked, finally brushing his hair away. His bottomless eyes studied her for an answer with an intensity that could easily inspire terror or passion, neither of which she would fully register until she settled. He looked around the room. Nothing was immediately available to support her. He could waste time down a transfiguration rabbit hole, or he could assess the damage. He chose the latter.
The scratches on her face were superficial enough. They’d heal in a day or two without any special medical attention. Her left forearm, though, seemed to be dripping blood and there were noticeable tears along her sleeve. He slowly rolled up the fabric, revealing a deep gash along her arm.
“That’s not good,” she said. Her blank stare suggested she saw the injury but wasn’t fully aware it was hers.
“Obviously not,” he said, annoyed at the distraction while he mentally raced through his stocks of potions and salves that could help her regrow skin despite her condition. “Do you hurt anywhere else?”
“Hurt?”
His hooked nose crinkled. “Do you feel pain anywhere?”
She held up the same arm he’d already examined.
“Fine, I’ll figure it out myself.” He held her in place with one hand at the shoulder and carefully pressed against her other arm, torso, belly, legs, and back in various places. Nothing triggered a reaction. He gently removed her hair from its braid and combed through it to examine her scalp. No new damage presented itself, but the well-defined scar along the back of her head caused his stomach to drop again.
“Severus?” she asked.
She hadn’t tripped over his name this time. “Are you starting to feel better?”
“Where are—?” She looked around them. “How did I get here?”
“You had a seizure,” he said, removing a wand from his cloak. “Lumos”. The tip of the wand lit. “Look straight at me.”
Without question or hesitation, she obeyed and allowed him to scan her for a concussion. He wished half his students would listen so readily, though what choice did she have but to listen to her caregiver? Still, the trust in her eyes unnerved him. He wouldn’t comply so readily were he so heavily restricted as she. He might initially appreciate the solitude, but seeing only one person in months would have tested that.
“Nox,” he said, extinguishing the light and putting his wand away. “No concussion.”
“Finger tests?” she asked. She gave a small chuckle, but deep sadness spread across her face and her eyes began to water.
“Arm first.”
She stared down at it. “How did I—?”
“I found you like this.”
She nodded. Silent tears began to fall.
“Do not bother yourself with things beyond your control. Be grateful I found you. Someone else might have tried to cart you off to the hospital wing.” He was trying to sound comforting. He should have been comforting, but even he could hear the flippant tone in his voice.
She said nothing. Her head jerked suddenly to the side.
“Are you seizing again?” he asked.
“Just twitches,” she said.
He nodded. “Hold yourself upright. The supplies I need are in my storeroom, and even I can’t be in two places at once.”
She placed her uninjured hand behind her, bracing herself more firmly on the desk, and weakly smiled to indicate she had herself balanced.
With more difficulty than he imagined it would take him, Severus Snape tore himself from her side and moved into the large closet near the corner of the classroom. He opened it with a flick of his wand and immediately scanned the shelves of magical ingredients and pre-made potions within. Several labels included a simple black dot in the upper corner—his indicator that they were or could be effectively used on her. Everything he could think of to heal her arm required ingredients she couldn’t take. He grabbed a small box of gauze, bandages, peroxide, and antibiotic ointment. He’d never kept these before but had since accepted the primitive muggle treatment as helpful in her case.
He swore.
Her voice echoed into the storeroom “Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” he thought. He shook his head, ridiculing the notion that she could do if he hadn’t been okay. He grabbed a small first aid kit and a vial of an anti-pain potion that he’d developed specifically for her. As he left, his collection of empty, sanitized vials caught his eye. ”Might as well.” He grabbed two between his fingers and returned to her.
He gently pressed one of the empty vials beside her wound, collecting some of the still flowing blood.
“Another sample for your collection?” she asked, hissing at the pressure.
“I won’t have to draw it again later,” he said, switching vials.
Once done, he handed her pain potion, which she downed in a single gulp before sitting up straighter.
She forced herself to look at the arm again. “That needs stitches.”
“I’m not stitching you up,” he said.
“But look at it,” she said. “That’s got to be—”
“I’ve learned more about medicine—muggle or otherwise—than I ever intended to. I cross the line at sticking you with a needle and thread.”
“Afraid of being mistaken for a seamstress?”
He looked up at her, again catching her directly in the eye. His ever-present scowl failed to intimidate her as she tried to amuse him. He returned to the arm and without another word, proceeded to disinfect and clean it.
Her breathing became shallow.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Through narrow, dumbfounded eyes, she almost laughed. “I’m bloody injured.”
He worked quickly to wrap her arm in a bandage and cover it with gauze. When he released his grip, she relaxed slightly. Her limbs twitched. He sat on the desk just behind her and held her shoulders just enough to keep her upright. As her spasms subsided, a large yawn escaped her.
Snape found himself fighting off a yawn of his own. “Just a bit more and we can get you to bed.”
“I’m going to sleep the whole day,” she said with a grin.
“Not the whole day, I’m afraid,” he said. “I want to change your bandages every few hours until I’m sure it’s healing right.”
She pouted. “I just want to rest.”
“Then let’s get your tests over with. He moved to once again crouch in front of her.
She rolled her eyes. “My name is Corina. I am currently in the potions classroom of Hogwarts, a school for magic. I don’t know what day it is, but it’s not my fault that they all bleed together and you don’t have any windows in this part of the castle. My birthday is—”
Snape held a finger up several inches away from her and to the right.
She touched her nose, touched the finger, and touched her nose again. He moved his finger. She continued the test until he instructed her to switch hands. She again complied immediately.
“Look at me” he said. He held up fingers on the side of his head and had her tell him the number she saw based on her peripheral vision. She flew through the exercise. Finally, he took two fingers and gently ran them against her calves, shoulders, and cheeks. She confirmed they felt the same on either side.
“We’ll skip the strength tests,” he said.
She smiled and a small “yay” escaped.
“Now to get you to bed.”
He helped her to her feet. Though unsteady and very slow, she was walking on her own again. He followed behind her.
Once outside the potions room, she pressed her hand against the wall for leverage until she stopped in front of one of the many torches lining the dungeon hallways. Her head turned slightly. She wobbled, losing balance but not entirely.
“Three more,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
“They all look the same,” she said. “How do you tell them apart?”
“They’re not all the same.”
She kept walking until they were beside the supposedly correct torch, which she then studied intently. She blinked out of sync. She slightly tottered from one foot to the other. All the same, her brow furrowed in determination as she studied the stick, flames, protective grate, wall fastenings…She turned to Snape.
He touched a stone six below and three to the right of the wall fastenings. “Myoclonus,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed. “You have to change that password,” she said.
“At least it’s one you can’t forget.”
She scrunched up her face in silent mockery.
A sliver line painted itself along the stone wall, dancing into patterns until they formed an elaborate archway. The stone beneath the arch disappeared, and a door took its place. Before them now lay a living room with two chairs facing a fireplace, a table covered in scrolls of ungraded papers, and a wall of bookshelves so overcrowded with books and scrolls that additional side tables were placed nearby to hold towers more of them. A small kitchen that often doubled as a personal laboratory was just around the corner from the fireplace. Ignoring the organized, if overcrowded, living quarters of the potions master, Snape and Corina headed for the bedroom door just behind the ungraded papers.
He sat her on the edge of the bed. Without a word, he proceeded to the dresser and placed a clean nightdress beside her. He collected her toothbrush and toothpaste from the ensuite washroom along with a cup of water for drinking, a bowl of warm water to wash her face, and a small towel. Her medication vial was nearly empty. He’d spend most of the next few days recalculating dosages to find something better than what was clearly not working now.
He returned to the room to find her lying flat across the bed, unchanged and occasionally twitching.
“Corina?”
She slammed her fist against the bed and snorted air through her nose. “I’m sick of this. I just want a brain that works.” With a grunt and a shove, she got herself back into a seated position. “Why did they do this to me?”
“It’s not as bad as what they intended to do,” he said.
“If you tell me I’m lucky, I’ll—”
“You’re very much not lucky. There is nothing about permanent brain damage that I’d consider lucky. I merely suggest death is a worse outcome.”
“Right now, I’d question that,” she said.
“Right now, I need to clean the small cuts on your face.” She first reached for the towel, but Snape held it back. “Allow me. You can’t see the scratches.”
Her sneer matched the best of his. Rather than give in, and perhaps to prove to herself that she could do something on her own, she snatched the toothbrush and angrily cleaned her teeth. She grabbed the glass of water with her injured hand.
Snape shut his eyes and said nothing.
Inevitably, her arm gave a small twitch. Water spilled on the floor. It wasn’t much, but that didn’t stop Corina from muttering a string of presumed swears while finishing brushing her teeth. She handed Snape the used toothbrush. With a gargle of water from the glass and a spit into the empty one, she was one step closer to bed.
“Do you want assistance or not?” Snape asked, holding up the towel.
She nodded.
Snape dipped his pinky finger into the bowl, confirming it was still warm, and wet the cloth until it was just barely damp. “You shouldn’t have left this room,” he said flatly. “What were you thinking?”
“I was hungry and didn’t feel well. You didn’t exactly tell me when you were coming back, so I thought a small trip would be…Anyway, I heard footsteps and voices that weren’t yours. I hid in a nook. I don’t remember anything after that.” She stifled her cries. “I’m sorry.”
He brought the cloth to various parts of her forehead and cheeks, allowing it to sooth more than heal.
Her shoulder twitched. “Damnit!”
“Getting angry makes it worse,” he said, rewetting the towel. “You have to control your emotions.”
She nodded and shut her eyes. Her breathing slowed. Her twitches seemed to stop for a moment, but they did return. Each time, she responded with a curse, a deep breath, and a tear-filled attempt to regain control.
Snape placed the towel aside and held up the nightgown. “Here.”
Corina immediately began pulling off her outer robes. She was halfway through unbuttoning her torn and bloodied nightgown before Snape realized two things: first, that she was undressing in front of him and second, that he was staring at her. He quickly placed the new nightgown beside her and headed for the door.
“Severus?” she asked.
He stopped, his hand on the doorframe.
“I’m sorry to ask, but I can’t wriggle out of this.”
He turned back to see her struggling to free herself. She couldn’t navigate the robe much beyond her knees and couldn’t stand up to fix it.
“If you can’t dress yourself, maybe you should rest as you are.”
“I’d be more comfortable in clean clothes,” she said. “I don’t understand why you have to act like schoolboy who hasn’t seen a pair of tits before instead of helping me—”
“Fine,” he said, marching over and leaning her left and right to pull the robe out from underneath her. “A schoolboy?” he thought, still looking away as he removed the nightgown and grabbed the new one. He was determined to grant her the privacy that she might be grateful for in the morning. Once done, he disposed of the ruined garment with a flick of his wand.
She’d already started manipulating her way under the duvet.
“Anything else?” he asked.
She gave a barely perceptible shake of her head. Her eyes closed, and she appeared to have almost instantly fallen asleep.
Snape looked at the clock across from her bed. It was nearly two in the morning, and tomorrow he had back-to-back first and second-year student classes. He mentally ran through his list of tasks, which now included changing bandages and hoping there were no additional complications with Corina’s arm. He desperately wanted to ask for a substitute. The more sensible part of him knew that would attract more attention. He resolved to speak with the Headmaster tomorrow and, hopefully, garner advice.
“Severus?” Corina called, her voice soft and half asleep.
“Do you need something?”
“I’m sorry for what happened,” she said, again. “I didn’t mean for—”
“Focus on getting sleep.”
She nodded, eyes still mostly closed.
“If you need anything, I’m next door.”
“I remember,” said Corina. “Good night.”