Promises to Keep

The war came to an end for both Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy the night Draco lost his legs. It had been six months since Dumbledore had died, and five months since Snape had helped Lucius Malfoy escape from Azkaban. They had been on the run more or less continuously and they were cold and tired and hungry and Snape was wounded. It was not a very bad wound--only a hex that had hit his shoulder--but it hurt and it was enough to slow him down and make him careless.

He did not even see the spellmine until he stepped on it, and Draco--who must have seen it at approximately the same time--barreled into him and sent him flying. He landed rolling, and his weight on his bad shoulder was enough to make him black out for a few seconds. When he opened his eyes he was on his back ten feet from the mine and there was blood, warm wet blood that was not his own, on his face. He struggled to hands and knees and crawled to where Draco lay.

He was in a pool of blood spreading far too quickly for his injury to be anything but mortal. Snape had seen and done a number of very bad things, and this was as bad as any of them. Draco's legs ended just above the knee, and the wounds were ragged, with bone protruding. He was bleeding to death, his skin already cool to the touch. And he was conscious, and screaming, the thin and relentless noise an animal makes in extremity.

Snape had been trained to kill and not to heal. If he had had time to think, time to wonder what kind of life he was condemning Draco to, he might not have managed it. He closed his eyes and gripped his wand, and cauterized the wounds as best he could. After the first leg, Draco passed out.

Their pursuers were less than a minute behind them. Snape got to his feet and stood, swaying a little, waiting for them to come. They were moving slowly, cautiously; they would have heard the mine going off, and be wondering whether it had been successful. His wand was in his pocket; he held his empty hands out to either side. He had always thought he'd die before he yielded, but this was hardly the first plan Draco had destroyed.

The first man over the rise was Remus Lupin. Of course it was. He had been witness to almost all of the worst moments of Snape's life. "I surrender," he shouted. "The boy with me needs immediate medical attention."

"Throw your wand down to me and lie down on the ground with your arms over your head," Lupin yelled back.

"I'm getting my wand out of my robes," Snape warned, and then complied.

When he was down Lupin hit him with a Petrificus and jogged by him to kneel beside Draco. "Christ," he said softly. "Oh, Jesus. I told Moody not to use the damn mines. I'll have a team here in five minutes, Snape, I promise." He had forgotten, Snape thought--that they were on opposite sides in this war. Or maybe, Lupin being Lupin, it didn't matter to him.

It didn't matter to Snape, either. He was tired of running. He closed his eyes and tried not to picture what was left of Draco.

Lupin had mediwizards on the scene very quickly. They loaded Draco on to a stretcher, casting stabilizing and monitoring spells on him as they did so. Snape listened to their voices, and came as close to praying as he had done in a very long time. What Draco had done for him, given up for him, did not bear thinking of; it was as supreme a sacrifice as the one Dumbledore had made years earlier, that had put Snape on this path to begin with.

After Draco was gone they took him to Azkaban. Snape was very tired, and the pain in his shoulder had grown exponentially. The trip, consisting as it did of a half dozen Apparitions, followed by a boat ride, seemed nightmarishly long and miserable. He had been to the prison only once before, the night he had come with Bellatrix Lestrange to liberate Lucius Malfoy--the night he had quarreled with Malfoy and left him in London to die. Azkaban had seemed smaller then, less grim: they had been full of hope, and pleasure at their own cleverness. This time he felt sure he had come here forever.

He rather thought that Lupin had given his guards their orders. They were kinder to him than he expected them to be, though they supervised him ruthlessly. When he had bathed and changed and had his rights read to him, they led him to his cell and locked him away. And, though he did not know it then--that was the last human contact he would have for more than a year.

They came for him after the war ended, long after he had lost count of the days, lost track of the world. Long after any of it had ceased to matter to him. They seemed to think he should be grateful for his freedom, and he tried to be. But the sun was so bright it made his eyes burn, and he was still so very tired, though he had spent the long months sleeping. They took him before the Minister of Magic, and pinned medals on his chest.

And Lupin told him what had happened, how they had learned the truth about his role in the war. And then he asked if there was anything that Snape wanted. Snape could think of only two things: he wanted to see Draco, and he wanted to go home. Home was the little house at Spinner's End that had been his father's. He wanted peace. Lupin agreed, reluctantly. He seemed to think Snape was owed something more. "Don't do me any favors," Snape said to him, which seemed to silence him.

All the same, it was Lupin who proposed that Snape take Draco with him. "For company," was how he put it, and if it had been anyone else who said it, Snape would have looked for a double entendre in the words. Since it was Lupin, he took them at face value. The last thing that he wanted was company, to be burdened with a crippled child who would be dependent on him forever. But Draco had saved his life, and deserved the kindness Snape could spare for him.

"Very well," he said, after a pause that he had let go on far too long. Lupin smiled, and began to talk of handicapped accessibility and wheelchair ramps, and Snape bared his own teeth in a grimace that passed as a smile and ignored him. He was surprised to find that the boy he had Flooed to St. Mungo's to collect was closer to eighteen than fifteen, and as much a prisoner as a patient.

Snape had been a spy, but Draco was a traitor. The Wizengamot had been lenient, in view of his extreme youth and his horrific injuries, and spared him his life. And such a life it would be, confined in a chair and without even the use of magic for consolation. Snape did his best to look at his face and not the stumps of his legs, but he did not quite know how to talk to him, and he knew that the awkwardness between them would not simply go away.