Lionsnake Manor

Draconn Malfoy

Story Summary:
AU. The squickfic of all times! The Lupin-Potter-Snape-Malfoy-Black sixsome is living happily in their Lionsnake Manor (AKA Malfoy Manor). However, the future is having some new plans for them. SLASH MPREG (almost) INCEST RLSBHPSSLMDM

Chapter 09 - Depression

Chapter Summary:
Severus is on a dark mood. This leads into him hurting himself -- badly. Fortunately, Draco's there to help him. Later, Lucius's dark story interrupts Harry's and Sirius's joy about their future twins.
Posted:
01/07/2005
Hits:
3,463
Author's Note:
::hides:: A little warning... This chapter is a lot darker than the others. At first, Severus was just innocently standing in his laboratory, and then he turned into... well, something entirely else. I had nothing to do with that! I swear! He got out of my hands, and so did the plot! ::chases the plot:: Back where you belong, at once!


Lionsnake Manor

*

Depression

*

Severus sighed as he stared down at the potion boiling in the cauldron in front of him. Then, shaking his head, he took the cauldron from the fire, walked over to the sink and poured all the liquid there. Then he just sighed deeper and shook his head again, returning quietly to his work.

Yet another potion had been for naught. Yet again he had risked catching the Dark Plague by handling a Dark potion, hoping to find a cure to that very disease, but the results had been negative. Again. During the last months, the whole time after his husbands' impregnation, that was, he'd been working on the cure. This far, he'd had little luck. Some of his tests had raised his hopes, but not too much.

Almost if on accident, his hand grasped a knife on the worktable next to him. With cool fascination, he pressed the edge of the knife's blade against his thumb. A pearl of blood poured out, smearing onto his pale skin. Yes, these knives were certainly very sharp.

Eyeing curiously his hand, he wondered just how sharp they were.

Oh, no, he would not cut his arms anymore -- he had bad scars enough as it was, and besides, the others would have figured it out immediately. No, he'd have to come up with something else if he truly wanted to punish himself for failing Remus's baby yet again. Maybe something that would seem like an accident...

Placing his hand calmly on the worktable, he placed the knife just right. His fingers spread out, he then pressed the blade. It hurt, but it didn't hurt enough, so he pressed it further. And suddenly, the knife only met the surface of the table. He'd just cut his forefinger off. With calm satisfaction, Severus watched the blood pouring out of the open wound. Could one bleed dry from a cut finger?

Then he thought better about it. When his husbands got to know about this, they'd be mad. At least they'd be mad if they knew he'd done it on purpose, which they would surely know if he didn't try to do anything to help it. So, he grasped a cloth on the nearby table and tied it around the open wound on the spot that had once held his finger. Then he raised his unharmed hand to the pendant on his neck. Each of his husband's had a similar one, and they were their best means of communication.

"Draco?" he asked, trying to maintain a calm tone. "Hey, Draco, could you possibly come here soon?"

"Why so, Severus?" Draco's voice echoed to his ears from the pendant. "Has something happened?"

"Well, I made a mistake while chopping the ingredients," the Potions Master replied calmly, at the same time eyeing coolly the cloth wrapped around the stump of his finger. Blood was coming through it. "And I do fear that if you don't come here immediately, I might lose one finger." After this, he broke the contact before any of Draco's desperate questions, which were sure to follow such a declaration, got to his ears.

Just like he'd expected, the young blond barged in almost right after he'd ended the call. "I thought you could help me with this," he said as calmly as only he could manage, waving his injured hand in the air.

"Merlin, Severus," breathed Draco as he opened the cloth and saw the bleeding wound. "Where's your finger? I can still attach it back." As the Potions Master nodded mutely towards the nearby worktable, the blond immediately sprang there, indeed finding the missing digit in the middle of a buddle of blood. With shaking hands, he set the finger carefully to its rightful place, then murmured several charms to attach it.

"Thank you," Severus said calmly, examining his newly attached finger with mild interest, watching especially closely the blood on the place where it'd been cut. "I'll just get back to my work, then."

"No, you will not," Draco said very strictly, grasping his arm. "Not before you've answered my question."

"Oh?" Severus raised an eyebrow. "And what might your question be, then?"

"Why did you do it?" The blond's pained gaze tore Severus, and he had to turn his face away to avoid looking into those silver pools. "Answer me, Severus. I know you did it on purpose. Why?"

"How do you know I did it on purpose?" the older Slytherin asked flatly.

"Because you never make a mistake, about anything, but least of all when you're doing something potentially dangerous. You wouldn't have accidentally chopped your finger off, you could chop those ingredients with a blindfold and you know it. And besides," Draco added, with a much firmer tone, "If you truly had been chopping ingredients... I'd think there were some chopped ingredients on one of the worktables, and that the blood and finger would have been there. Plus, you would not be this calm."

Sighing, Severus shook his head. "Just let it be," he said levelly. "Why do you care?"

"Why do I care?" echoed Draco, now getting even more angry. "You're my husband, Severus! My fucking soulmate! I love you, you bloody fool, though Merlin knows why! Of course I do care!"

"If I weren't your soulmate, you would hardly care whether I live or die," the Potions Master said, not batting an eyelid. "So why'd I let something beyond our powers stop me?"

"Think about how upset Remus will be," Draco tried desperately. "He'll think that this is all about the one of our babies he's carrying. Getting distressed might harm his baby. You don't want that, do you?"

"That baby will die anyway," muttered Severus. "And it will die because I've failed it -- I've failed you all."

"No, you haven't!" replied the small blond heatedly. "You've never failed any of us! And the baby will live -- if you just continue trying! You cannot give up, Severus, and you certainly cannot kill yourself -- because if you do that, then the baby will die, since you're the only one who can save it from the Dark Plague!"

"Of course it'll be my fault," Severus said levelly. "Everything is my fault, right?"

Draco sighed deep. This conversation was not going to a good direction...

*

"What's the matter?" asked Lucius, raising his eyebrows at the three of his husband's who'd just entered the room. They all looked absolutely shocked, yet a bit bemused at the same time.

"Well, a mediwitch from St. Mungo's came to check on us," Sirius said with an amused voice.

"I'm well aware of that," the elder blond of their family said calmly. "Go on, please."

"You know that mediwitches can know things about the pregnancy with their scans far before the Muggle doctors?" Harry asked then. As Lucius nodded, the bespectacled man went on, "Well... We just found out that both I and Sirius are in fact carrying twins!"

Now, Lucius's jaw dropped down. "You -- you're both with twins?" he asked, shocked.

"Exactly," Sirius said, grinning. "We don't know yet whether either of the twins are identical. Harry's are not, that we know for sure -- he has both a girl and a boy. I, however, have two girls, with no knowledge about whether they're identical or not."

"And I'm carrying a boy," Remus said happily, plopping down on the couch next to Lucius. "All of our pregnancies are developing normally. There are no reasons to worry about anything."

"Nice to hear that you think so," said a dry voice from the doorway. "Since soon you will have reasons to worry." They all turned to look at Draco, who was standing there, looking extremely serious.

"What do you mean?" asked Lucius, frowning. "Why'd there be reasons for that?"

"Severus," sighed Draco, sitting down on an armchair. The other men got seated, too, all looking concerned at the name of the last of their husbands. "He just called to me," the younger blond continued with a monotonous voice. "Said that he'd made a mistake while chopping the ingredients. So, I went there, expecting to find some wound on his finger or something." He swallowed, unable to continue.

"What it is, Draco?" asked Remus gently, his amber eyes full of concern and worry. "What had happened to Severus?" The others all looked worried, too. They knew Severus too well not to be worried.

"He'd cut his forefinger," Draco said blankly. "Not just made a cut on it, mind you, but bloody chopped it wholly away. When I got to his lab, he just stood there, watching blood seeping through the cloth he had tied onto the wound. It was obvious he'd done it on purpose. But he didn't seem depressed -- no, he was just as calm and controlled as always, answering my questions as sensibly as can be expected of him."

"What did you do to him?" asked Sirius after some time, breaking the absolute silence that had fallen over them. "You didn't -- you didn't leave him unattended after that, did you?"

"Of course not. I placed antisuicidal charms on him, twisted upon myself, then told him that if he tried to hurt himself any more, it wouldn't harm him, but me. He just nodded calmly and set back to work. I don't think he'll try anything now, but..." The blond swallowed. "I can't keep the charm up forever, and he knows it," he said quietly. "He's more powerful than me, it'll be easy for him to break it if the depression gets a too strong hold on him. We have to figure some way to watch him all the time."

"Well, that's easy," Lucius said slowly. "We'll simply move an armchair to the laboratory, and one of us will always be there. However, we should help him get over his depression, so we wouldn't have to worry."

"The only thing that would get him over it is the damned cure," muttered Harry, his arms crossed protectively over his stomach. "That's what he's agonizing himself over -- the Dark Plague."

"Well, we cannot take that worry from him, now can we," Remus said quietly. "Not unless I abort my baby." At this, he, too, crossed his arms over his stomach, a look of fear on his face.

"You will not do that," Lucius said firmly, wrapping an arm around him. "In fact, you will not even talk about that. This is not your fault, not your baby's fault, and no, not even Severus's fault. The only things we can blame for this are the War, that and Voldemort."

"What do you mean, Voldemort?" asked Draco, suddenly very watchful. "Are you talking about his general spying, or did the old snakeface do something to Severus?"

"Well, he indeed did do something," sighed the older blond. "We agreed not to talk about it, Severus and I -- but if you don't get too upset, I will tell," he added, glancing hesitantly at his pregnant husbands.

"Tell us," Sirius said quietly. "I hardly can get any more upset than I am now, and I'd like to at least know what is driving Severus mad." Remus and Harry both nodded quietly in agreement.

"Very well." The blond sighed, his eyes casted down on the floor. "When Voldemort captured Severus, he used him as a bait to get you into a trap, Sirius and Remus." As both men nodded, he continued, "Before this, however, he did some... other things... to our poor love. Somehow, the Dark Lord managed to penetrate Severus's mental walls. Thus knowing full well of our relationship, he filled Severus's mind with horrible images -- images of us all dying, or being tortured, or just suffering. And in every image, the one who killed us, or tortured us, or otherwise pained us, was not Voldemort, but Severus himself."

Everybody had fallen silent. Nobody broke the silence until Lucius decided to go on. "That's why he wasn't mentally stable when Voldemort had you all imprisoned -- and that's why he wouldn't tell anything to you. I manage to convince him to talk to me after you'd all been rescued. He knew by then that the images weren't true, of course, but when he first saw them, they were reality to him, and he believed them. It almost tore his mind apart. It's a miracle that he managed to come out even somehow sane, a miracle that only happened because he was simply too stubborn to let go. In fact, we should be thankful that he's 'only' depressed and self-loathing. If the worst had happened, he might be just a screaming madman."

They all shuddered at the thought. "Merlin," breathed Draco. "I knew that he is strong in almost every aspect, but I couldn't have even imagined just how strong he is. I, for one, would not have come out sane."

Sirius nodded slowly. "None of us would have," he said quietly. "None, but Severus. You're right, Lucius -- it's a miracle that he still has his mind with him. Even if that mind is slightly damaged."

"Well," Harry said, trying to manage a determined tone, "let's just try to keep his body from being damaged, too." They all exchanged determined glances. Severus might be strong, but from himself even he wasn't safe, not on his own.

And when Severus couldn't do on his own, they had to help him.

***


Next chapter: Recalling Evil

Some moodswings... And some more Severus angst. He won't actively hurt himself, though. I promise he won't.