Almost Human

Almost Human

Chapter One

Hospital Wing

There was a sound of thrashing from behind the curtain.

"Shhh.....Draco, be still. Now I'll have to reset all of the needles," the Healer Archon said in a soothing voice that made Severus's skin crawl.

"Where's the Professor?" Draco sounded panicked.

"I'm right here, Draco," Severus said.

"Don't go, okay?"

"I won't." Severus had been ushered out from behind the curtains by the Healer, who evidently thought it quite unsuitable for a boy's skin to be seen by non-medical eyes. Severus was just as glad. Even thought he'd had acupuncture himself--dozens of times--when it was Draco's back full of needles, it still looked like torture.

"It doesn't hurt as much," Draco said. When Severus didn't answer right away, he asked anxiously, "Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"I still can't feel my legs."

The Healer interrupted, "Nerve regeneration will take some time."

"We know," Severus said. Draco had managed to escape brain damage or insanity, but the Cruciatus Curse had affected his nerves and spinal cord.

"I'm going to be able to walk again," Draco said uncertainly.

"In time," Archon said.

"Of course," Snape added, although he was less confident of the Healer's abilities than the Healer himself was.

"You should start thinking about resuming normal activities," the Healer continued, "As soon as we have the pain under control and you're strong enough to stay awake for normal periods of time. It's best not to isolate yourself after this sort of trauma."

It was as close as the Healer had come to talking about the psychological effects of Draco's torture. Snape waited anxiously to see how the boy would react.

"How'm I supposed to do that?" he asked querulously. "Mobilicorpus?"

"A wheelchair might be more practical."

Draco groaned.

The Healer continued, "The needles are set. Now be still for half an hour."

"How about if half of me is still for an hour?"

The Healer came out from behind the curtain and, without so much as a by-your-leave, grabbed Severus's hand and unwound the slightly grubby bandage that was wrapped around it. "The human mouth is notoriously filthy."

Severus thought, but didn't say, that he was notoriously filthy.

"So biting yourself is not a good idea."

"Neither is screaming in the middle of a Death Eater meeting."

"I suppose not." Archon probed at the wound with the tip of his wand, draining out a quantity of greenish pus. "You need to keep this clean, and change the bandages whenever they get wet."

"I know." He didn't have too many opportunities to get his wound dirty sitting by Draco's bedside, but Poppy and the Healer had him brewing some of the potions Draco needed, and he didn't always want to stay away long enough to fix his bandages afterward.

"Do what he says, Professor," Draco called. "Can you imagine if we only had five working limbs between us?"

He had a point. "Very well."

Finally, the Healer took the needles out and left, and Severus was able to take his seat by Draco's bed. Draco had been awake and mostly lucid--as opposed to stupefied and screaming in agony--for a few days.

"Now it just feels like a sunburn. A bad one. And itchy. Is that normal?"

"Why didn't you ask the Healer?" Before, Draco had said that it felt like the lower half of his body was on fire. No, dipped in fire. Snape wasn't sure there was a difference, but it was best to be accurate about such things.

"I figured you'd know."

He did--he knew all about the effects of Cruciatus. But he'd never been attacked quite as badly as Draco had been. Voldemort has always wanted him alive and functional. "Yes, it's normal."

"What happens now?" he asked.

"Now you should rest." That's what Pomfrey always told him.

"No. I mean...is he...is Voldemort--" he stumbled over the named "--going to come after us? After you?"

"Probably. He'll send people, I mean." Severus realized belatedly that he probably shouldn't have said that. "The Headmaster says we're safe here in the school." That was why Draco wasn't in St. Mungo's--the hospital wasn't designed with security in mind. Hogwarts had been, and extra defenses had been added over the years.

"How long can we stay here?"

The school year wasn't far from over. Severus hoped that was what Draco meant. "As long as necessary."

Draco closed his eyes for a minute, and Snape thought maybe he really was resting. Really was reassured. But then he said, "Do you think he's right?"

"I don't know." He was safer than he was anywhere else, but Snape couldn't be sure that was enough.

"I guess you're....not a spy anymore."

"No. No, I'm not." Now he was revealed as a traitor.

"I'm glad. Is it wrong of me to be glad?"

Probably. But Dumbledore had said it was all right. "No. It's not wrong."

"It's probably...I mean, what you were doing was important. But I'm glad you don't have to do it anymore."

"I didn't save you so I could stop doing it." He had done it, as Dumbledore had forced him to recognize, because he loved Draco enough that he was willing to sacrifice his life's work, let alone his life, to save him.

"I know." Draco still had his eyes closed.

"You should rest."

Draco nodded. "You won't go anywhere?"

"No. I won't go anywhere."

After a while, Dumbledore came. He stopped, watching Severus watch Draco.

"He's stable?" Dumbledore broke the silence.

"Yes."

"You should come have dinner in the Great Hall."

"Why?" He was only vaguely aware that he hadn't dined in public, or taught a lesson, or even marked any homework since Draco had been attacked. But no one would care if he never did any of those things again, not really.

"Some of the students are beginning to doubt that you're still alive."

"Let them doubt." They always had.

"Come, Severus. They'll be reassured if you make an appearance."

He shook his head. They wouldn't. Besides.... "I told him I'd stay. If he wakes up and I'm not here..."

Albus looked disappointed. "Well..."

"You want me to resume my teaching duties," he realized. That was what this was all about. "Tomorrow," he said.

"Tomorrow's Saturday." He didn't bother to deny it.

"Monday, then."

"If you feel up to it. Professor Sprout has been handling your classes, and Hagrid's had to take on some of hers. I'm sure the students who have O.W.L.s and N.E.W.Ts coming up would prefer to have their regular teachers back."

"I'll manage."

#

The Professor stands over him, wand at the ready. He's terribly pale, and his wand hand is bleeding.

"Kill him."

"Yes, my lord," Snape breathes, looking miserable and resolute. "Avada," he says, "Kedavra."

Draco screams.

He woke up, thrashing around. Half of him, anyway. The Professor eased him back onto the bed. "It's okay, Draco, you're all right."

"I know." He raked his hair back off of his forehead. "I'm OK."

"Dreams, again?"

"No, just felt like screaming," he joked bitterly.

"Poppy told me she'd skin me alive if I gave you any more dreamless sleep potion."

An image swam up behind his eyes, and he tasted bile. After a moment he managed to mutter, "That was tactful of her."

Snape winced. "Yes. Do you...want to talk about it?" he asked reluctantly.

He thought about it. "Not really." He would only have to think about it more. "It was pretty much what you'd expect." Except for one small, horrible detail.

"Eh." The Professor sat back in his chair.

"You won' go away?"

"Of course not." Snape took one of Draco's hands in both of his. "Go back to sleep, and I'll stay right here."

#

"You both need to eat." Poppy slammed the trays back down in front of them. "And I've told the House-Elves not to take the trays away until you do." She bustled off to her office.

Draco looked at the food with undisguised revulsion. "I'm not hungry," he said flatly.

"Neither am I," Severus told him.

"If I have to look at that, I'll be sick."

"Try some of the bread," he suggested, following his own advice.

Draco nibbled at the corner of a roll, swallowed with obvious effort, and closed his eyes. "I'm really going to be sick."

Severus moved his tray and found a vial in his pocket. 'Here, drink this." Uncorking the vial, he poured it down Draco's throat.

He coughed feebly. "Thanks."

"Professor Snape, are you giving him your vile mixtures again?" Poppy reappeared and demanded.

He straightened. "My vile mixtures fill half your shelves, and they'd fill more if you'd--"

"What was it?"

"Mint and comfrey." Probably the least vile mixture in his entire pharmacopoeia, as it happened.

But she didn't calm down until Draco perked up, ate a few bites of potato, and looked at his pudding with something approaching interest. After that, she decreed that he could sit up and have visitors.

"Visitors?" Visitors hadn't been cleared with him. "Who's--"

But then some children came in--Granger, and the Huffnargle girl, some others of his Quidditch players. Severus faded back into a corner while Draco chattered animatedly with his friends.

The Huffnargle girl hitched herself up onto the end of Draco's bed. Then she frowned. "Am I sitting on you?"

He shrugged. "Are you? I haven't got any feeling in my legs right now."

All of the children looked stricken. "That's awful," Granger said.

"It's better than it was the other day."

"But will you be able to...." The Huffnargle girl didn't finish the thought.

Draco grinned and said, "I'm sure I'll be back in from by the time we start playing next year."

"We were all terribly worried," Granger put in.

"How do you think I felt?"

A first-year boy who was clutching a basket of fruit shoved it at him suddenly. "We brought you this. We all chipped in."

"Cool." Draco did not tell them the sight of it made him feel ill, and poked at it a bit before putting it on his bedside table. "Granger, you'll let me copy your notes for all the lessons I've missed, won't you?"

"Yes, of course." She blushed a little.

"Thanks ever so."

"Do you know when you'll be back in class?"

Draco's mask of good humor wavered, but only for a moment. "No. Soon, I expect," he said cheerfully.

The children stayed a bit longer before Madame Pomfrey shooed them away. Draco grinned, waved, and called, "Stop back again!" until they disappeared.

Then he drooped back onto his pillows and smiled wanly at Snape, who resumed his usual place. "They're a nice bunch of kids," he said defensively.

"Yes, I know."

"What do they think happened?" Draco apparently took it as a given that they didn't know the truth.

"There are a lot of rumors," he said evasively.

Draco just looked up at him.

Severus sighed. "They think you were captured by Death Eaters, tortured and almost killed, and that I saved you."

Draco looked confused. "But that's what happened."

"I know."

"But..." He trailed off.

"Opinions vary as to what I was doing there," Severus offered.

"You were supposed to kill me," Draco said uncertainly. It was a bit of a non sequiteur.

"Yes, I know." They hadn't talked about it, and in a way, Severus had hoped they never would.

Draco didn't say anything else for a while, until, "Father would've."

He should deny it. Say something like Of course not, what ever gave you an idea like that? Instead he said, "Probably. Voldemort never asked him to." It wasn't quite true--there had been a close call when Draco was a baby--but it was close enough.

"Good thing he wasn't there."

"Yes," Severus agreed.

"And you--were."

He swallowed hard. The next logical question was why.

But Draco just said, "Thanks."

"You're welcome." He added, "I expected they'd kill us both. I didn't think we'd actually get away." It seemed like an important distinction. That he hadn't acted with the sort of blind heroism that assumed everything would turn out right because his Cause was Just. He hadn't had any hope, or even desire, of living to fight openly for the Light. He just hadn't wanted to kill Draco, and he'd thought it was worth dying not to have to do it.

But he didn't say any of that, and Draco answered, completely barren of irony, "Lucky, I guess."

"Yes." Draco might never walk again--no matter what that idiot Healer said. Lucky as hell.

"What are we--what are you going to do now?"

He knew that Draco meant, now he was done spying. But he didn't know, so he answered, "Headmaster wants me back in the classroom on Monday. The day after tomorrow."

"Oh." He thought about that. "So you can't--I mean, yes, of course you have to...."

"I'll come here for meals. And if you need me--I'll tell Poppy she's to send for me immediately if you need me, even if I'm in a lesson."

Draco nodded, not looking entirely comforted. "Thanks."

Later that evening Draco--with substantial urging from Poppy--decided to make an early night of it. "And," she had added, "You should try getting to sleep without Professor Snape here."

"But--" they both said.

"You can hardly expect the man to sleep in a chair after he's taught a full day of lessons."

Draco bit his lip and nodded. "She's right, Professor. I'll be fine."

She hadn't said that. " Are you sure? I don't mind staying."

"Yes." He didn't sound sure, but Poppy was nodding approvingly.

"I'll check on you later. And," he added to the nurse, "Send for me right away if he asks for me. No matter how late it is."

She agreed, and he took himself to the staff room, feeling strangely bereft.

There he sat and prepared his lessons, in a desultory sort of way.

Rejoin the human race. It was easy for Dumbledore to say. He had always been....

He wasn't sure what he had always been. He had been a Death Eater and Dumbledore's spy his entire adult life. He couldn't go back and pick up the thread of his old life, his real life, because he'd never had one. Even his childhood--spent lurking in corners, learning curses, and losing fights--had been a kind of preparation for being a spy. No one had known what he was really like, and he had told himself it was because he'd wanted it that way.

Suddenly, with what seemed like a spastic jerk of his arm, he swept his lecture notes into the fire.

"Severus!" Professor McGonagall--Minerva--glared at him across the table.

For half a second, he was fourteen again and had just smashed the porcelain piggy bank that was his Transfiguration homework.

"You'll only have to do that over," McGonagall pointed out, as she had then.

"I don't care," he said petulantly, not meaning just the notes, or the piggy bank.

Why had he smashed that piggy bank? Had that been the week Potter and Black had played keep-away with his work before every lesson, always accidentally dropping or mangling it just before a teacher could come in and stop them? That would make sense, but maybe there had been some other reason.

Shaking his head to clear away the echoes, he sat back down and took out a fresh sheet of parchment to start over.

"I hear Draco's doing better?"

"Yes." Not that it was any of her business. He scratched "Shrinking Solution" at the top of the parchment, and continued, "Is very stupid, and far too simple for 3^rd year students to prepare."

"Why do you do things like that, when no one but you is going to read it?" McGonagall was reading his parchment upside down.

He curled his arm protectively around the paper. "Why don't you mind your own business?" Quickly, he wrote out the ingredients and method, along with a few notes on practical applications of the potion (which were few), then filled in the margins with drawings of exploding cauldrons and deadly plants.

When he realized what he was doing, he frowned. He hadn't done that in years.

McGonagall was saying, "I don't know why you're in such a foul mood, when you don't have to pretend to be a Death Eater anymore."

"Maybe I liked pretending to be a Death Eater," he snapped. And immediately wished he hadn't. He'd only said it to be bloody-minded, but was struck by the suspicion that it was probably true.

Bu McGonagall said, "You never!"

Forcing him to say, "I do so." Liked was perhaps too strong a word. But he wasn't sure there was an alternative he preferred.

"Well, you'll have to find another way to fill your days."

"Indeed. I might take up macramé," he said sourly.

McGonagall looked like she wanted to laugh, but didn't. "Severus...really..."

I'm quite all right," he lied.

#

Draco couldn't sleep, but pretended he was, so Madame Pomfrey would leave him alone. He couldn't stand pretending everything was all right. He even had to pretend a little with the Professor. All he wanted to do was shake people and tell them that he had almost died. Snape had almost had to kill him.

But everybody already knew those things. They just seemed not to grasp how wrong it all was.

Maybe the Professor did, a little.

He stared up at the ceiling. It was a very boring ceiling--just a regular pattern of stones. 172 of them. Not even any cracks or water spots to liven things up.

He wanted to get out of here, do something. Maybe get on his broom and fly until he was so tired he'd sleep without dreaming.

Hah. Despite what he'd told Violet, it was possible--maybe even likely--that his balance and reflexes would never be good enough for serious flying again. He also knew, from the way the Healers kept saying he'd be just fine, that there was a chance he wouldn't be. The Professor wouldn't lie to him, but maybe they were feeding him the same lies they were telling Draco.

Still, he wished the Professor was with him.