Apothecary and Auror

Chapter Six: Linked Magic

Snape arrived in his lab at six, just to make sure he was there ahead of Potter. With Lumos he lit the candles and torches, with Ignis he lit a fire in the hearth. And he didn't think he'd ever found it harder in his life to produce those two simple charms. The capacity of the dirty black Azkaban fog to creep into every nook and cranny and the amount of one's magical life-blood it took to sweep that fog back simply astounded him.

He emptied one of the jars of Defenses-Downdraught he'd put up yesterday into a cauldron and set it over a low flame to warm slowly. The potion was exactly where he wanted it, just short of the boiling point, when the torch flames began to flicker and the familiar melancholy began to settle over his heart.

A key rattled in the lock of the connecting door between the lab and the infirmary. The door opened and Potter stuck his head in.

"We're ready for you, Master Snape."

Snape ladled Defenses-Downdraught into a cup. Without forgetting to lock the door behind him, he entered the infirmary.

Snape sought out the Dementors first. Like black light, they shimmered in a corner. Ruskin, already bound to a bed, was lying back with his eyes closed as if he were asleep. Potter, eyes fixed on Ruskin, wand held lightly in his right hand, looked as though he hadn't slept in days.

Ruskin's eyes popped open suddenly, piercing blue in his grimy, sunken-cheeked face. He couldn't have been sleeping, Snape thought.

"Snape." Ruskin's voice sounded like sandpaper scraping across rough wood. "Back with the blood traitor, I see." His eyes flicked toward Potter, then back again to Snape. "Thought yesterday was a bad dream."

Snape could think of nothing to say. He supposed he didn't have to answer.

"Where will the Death Eaters meet next?" Potter asked in the same weary monotone he'd used the day before. "And who will attend the meeting?"

Leaning on his hands, Ruskin struggled up as far as his bonds would permit. Snape could see his arms and shoulders shaking. He spat expertly, straight toward Potter's face. Lifting his wand, Potter deflected the wad of spittle just before it struck him.

Potter reached out a hand. "The Draught, Master?" he said, his voice unchanged. Snape handed it to him. Potter extended the cup to Ruskin. "Will you please drink the potion voluntarily, Ruskin?"

Ruskin laughed, so harshly that Snape thought it must have hurt his throat. "What, and deprive you of your chance to bully me into it, Potter? When you're such a natural?" Ruskin fell back against the bed and grinned at Snape, his eyes glittering madly. "Isn't he, Severus? Did he play the underwear trick on you again last night? And what did he make you do to him after?"

"I'm asking you for the last time, Ruskin: please drink the potion," Potter said.

Ruskin jerked around to Potter again. "Fuck you," he whispered.

Potter lifted his wand.

"Stop!" Snape cried.

Potter lowered his wand and looked at Snape. His eyes were shadowed wth exhaustion. "What is is, Master?" he asked.

"Ruskin," Snape said. "Has someone examined the heart of his magical power recently?"

Ruskin laughed softly.

"No." Potter said. He looked too tired to go on, but he did. "He won't--"

"I won't let the bastards near me," Ruskin said.

"He refuses to allow Healer Shaftsbury to examine his power," Potter said.

"Then how do you know, Officer, that he is fit to be interrogated?" Snape asked. "He fought your spells and my potions all day yesterday. He had Dementors guarding him last night. He may be nearly drained. He certainly looks it."

Potter looked from Snape to Ruskin and back again. "There's nothing I can do about it if he won't let Shaftsbury examine him." His voice quavered just slightly. He was losing his cool veneer. "We've got to find out what he knows, and soon."

"Why the hurry?" Snape asked.

"Because word has it, from Moody's own sources, that Voldemort's planning to go after Aurors next. And their families. And the people Dumbledore's gathered round him; he even knows--" Potter stopped suddenly. His face went white with fear.

"Ah, yes, Potter." Ruskin's raspy voice. "The Order of the Phoenix. The Dark Lord knows about the Order of the Phoenix. And he knows the members of the Order. Every one of them."

Potter's eyes grew wide. Slowly he turned toward Ruskin. Their gazes locked for several long moments.

"He knows them, Potter," Ruskin whispered. "And he will kill them. Every one."

Snape heard Potter take several shallow, hitching breaths. Then he lifted his wand.

"Carmen--"

"Averte!" Snape said sharply. The countermanding spell leapt so fiercely from his wand that it threw Potter back a step.

Potter spun on him in infuriated surprise. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

A rustling like dry leaves sounded in the corner.

"Didn't you hear me, Potter?" Snape said. He flung a hand toward Ruskin. "That man is too weak to be interrogated today. He will fight our potions and he will fight our spells. Another day of that, followed by another night with the Dementors will very likely kill him! And if it doesn't, all he has to do is tell his Advocate you went on without examination, against the potioner's advice, and nothing he says can be used as evidence to gain a warrant or as sworn testimony before the Wizengamot!"

Potter was trembling. "Then don't advise me against going on."

Rustling sounded outside, all around, at the very edge of Snape's hearing. Imagination? He couldn't attend to it now.

"But I do advise you against it, Potter. And I will note that in my records."

Potter's chest heaved for a moment. He turned back to Ruskin. "Then let him tell me without the potion!" he shouted suddenly, bending over the prisoner. He seized Ruskin's collar and shook him. "Tell me where to find your Master and his murderers, tell me, or I'll--!"

Snape drew his wand. "Let him go, Potter!" he roared. "You arrogant, self-centered fool! This isn't the Quidditch pitch where you can beat up the Slytherin who's grabbed the Snitch out from under your nose!"

Potter dropped Ruskin. Ruskin fell back on the bed and gasped out his laughter. "Oh, no, this isn't Hogwarts! Far from it! James Potter's not cock of the walk here and he knows it! Not like the days when he could whistle for his Marauder curs and set them on some Slytherin he'd caught out by himself!"

The laughter went out like a Dementor-snuffed candle. Ruskin, panting, turned to look at Snape.

"You remember those days, don't you, Severus? I'd hear yelling, me and the lads would come running, and there you'd be, backed up against a wall, dodging the spells of four on one and giving as good as you got."

Snape stared at him. No one had ever put it to him that way before. Not even Ruskin.

Four on one. Giving as good as he got. For once, it didn't sound pathetic. It sounded almost...heroic.

"I had some respect for you then," Ruskin went on in his soft, raspy voice. A voice that rustled, almost, like the background noise. "You were tough. Why did you give it over? Why'd you turn your back on your own kind? Why'd you join them?" He tossed his head toward Potter. "What do you get from it, except for the chance to lick Potter's heels like the rest of his pack?"

"I don't have time for this!" Potter snarled. His eyes were wild, desperate. He pointed his wand at Ruskin. "You're going to drink that potion, Ruskin, one way or the other, and you're going to talk to me--!"

Rage, white-hot as an avenging spell, exploded in Snape. He raised his wand, aimed its tip at Potter's right hand.

"Expelliarmus!" he cried.

"Protego!" Potter yelled at the same time. With a crack and a blinding flash of light, their spells rebounded off each other and faded like spent fireworks.

His wand raised and his face livid with fury, Potter walked slowly around Ruskin's bed. When he was no more than a foot in front of Snape, he stopped.

"What was that all about?" Potter asked softly. He held his wand in dueling position, in front of his chest, its tip pointed at Snape's chin. "What do you think you're playing at?"

"I told you," Snape said. "One more session like yesterday's, and you'll kill him!"

"What are you, a Healer? How do you know?" Potter bent closer, until his nose was inches from Snape's. "Whose side are you on, anyway?"

Ruskin whimpered.

"You bastard," Snape hissed. "Isn't that just like you! I'm not on your side, hexing anybody who gets in your way, like Black. I'm not at your feet, groveling for the crumbs of your attention, like Lupin and Pettigrew. I have thoughts, desires and opinions that diverge from those of James Potter, Knight of the Light, so I'm just another Dark Wizard, fit for Azkaban!" He pointed his wand at the cup of Defenses-Downdraught Potter had set on the bedside table next to Ruskin. "Evanesco!"

The potion vanished. Snape turned toward his lab, saying, "That's what I'm going to do to every drop of Defenses-Downdraught I've brewed for you animals. Then I'm taking the next launch out of here."

"Not likely, Snape," Potter said. "The launch won't take you unless Warden Reid lets you go. Or maybe you've forgotten what I told you: like everybody else here, you're under the orders of Law Enforcement. And Warden Reid is the highest-ranking representative of Law Enforcement on Azkaban Island."

Snape stared at him. Potter stared back until comprehension dawned in his eyes.

"Yeah, you did lie, didn't you?" Potter said. "You volunteered because you thought playing this gig would be good for your career. Sure. You didn't volunteer any more than I did. So let's get it over with. Get me another Downdraught."

Trembling with fury, clutching his wand, Snape didn't answer. He heard something like the beating of birds' wings and the sound of weeping, soft and seemingly distant.

"Oh, and by the way," Potter said. "Mess with my Carmenoris one more time, Snape, and I go straight to Reid."

This, from the wizard who had stripped so much more than his clothing from Snape, in public, in front of the whole school. This, from the one who would have given him to a werewolf, if he could only have gotten away with it, who had saved Snape from Lupin only in order to save his own skin.

This, from the bully who hadn't changed one bit, whose latest victim was Ruskin, the only other other boy at Hogwarts who'd had the strength and popularity to go up against James Potter and his Marauders, and win. Ruskin, the only other wizard--or witch--at Hogwarts who had ever defended Snape without humiliating him.

Ruskin, whom Snape heard weeping.

Snape snarled deep in his throat. He raised his wand, and it didn't matter that the hand that held it shook. Potter was alone with him; it was a fair fight at last. No Black here to warn Potter as there'd been that day by the lake after O.W.L.s. Nobody to keep Snape from tearing Potter's face to ribbons with a Slicing Hex.

The bottled-up rage of years surged through Snape toward its focusing-point, the tip of his wand. Which was aimed at James Potter's face.

Then the door connecting the infirmary with the corridor burst open with a crash. The infirmary torches went out. And Ruskin screamed, a long, harsh, shrill sound, that made Snape think someone had to be tearing his heart from his chest.

That was just before Snape's father returned. Shouting, cursing, raising his wand: "I'll kill the both of you!" Meaning it was up to Snape, again, somehow, to save his mother.

But another voice spoke, too. What was it saying, in those tones of shock and horror?

"Paddy, how could you lead him to the Whomping Willow tonight! It's the full moon! How could you hand any human being, even him, over to a werewolf! What if Moony bites him? It's the death penalty! They'll send Moony to Azkaban and chop his head off; you'll have murdered our best friend! Merlin, what are we going to do?"

Potter.

"Potter." Snape hardly recognized his own choked, hoarse voice.

Snape's father bore down on him ("Stand aside, boy!"). Ruskin's scream, taking on words, pierced the darkness again:

"Dementors! Get them off me, oh, please--!"

Ruskin's voice was suddenly cut off.

Snape heard rustling snd sighing. Then, "Dementors," Potter croaked. He wasn't a yard from Snape, yet Snape could hardly see his outline in the darkness. "Dozens of Dementors."

Or scores of them. So many they'd burst the lock on the infirmary door. Snape could see them now, hooded forms looming solid black against the darkness they had created. They had a Leader: one at their head, which lifted spindly-fingered hands to sweep off its hood.

"Patronus," Snape gasped.

"But not--alone." Potter sounded as breathless as Snape felt. "We've got to link our powers. Alone, they'll--"

Potter faltered, but Snape understood him. Alone, they were too weak: the Dementors would take them and Kiss them, first one and then the other. He and Potter had to link their powers, to more than double their magical strength in a joined Patronus Charm, or they would never be able to drive off so many Dementors, who had fed so well on the misery of Azkaban Prison....

"Snape," Potter said hoarsely. "My hand. Take my hand--"

"Yes." Snape groped the air, felt Potter's fingers brush against his, seized Potter's hand. Potter's returning clasp was bonecrushingly painful, but warm and full of life as nothing else around Snape was.

"All right, Snape," Potter whispered harshly. "Your happiest thought. Even if it's the one where you're killing me."

It wasn't. His happiest thought was as it had ever been, the fresh night air on his face as he and his mother made their escape, the memory of those few short weeks of freedom before his mother enslaved herself to his father again.

And with that memory came another image, brief as a snapshot, of a beautiful young woman whose dark red hair was dressed with violets and lilies-of-the-valley, whose green eyes, on fire with joy, were gazing up into his face.

Lily Evans Potter, at her wedding. James Potter's wedding. James Potter's memory.

That was why Snape felt that odd rushing in his veins, that was why he knew exactly when Potter would call out the charm--

"Expecto Patronum!" At precisely the same moment, two wizards' voices rang out.

A blue-white jet of light shot simultaneously from their raised wands. So blinding was the flash that it took Snape a few moments to see his arctic fox darting with unerring precision between the legs of a huge, leaping animal, a stag, a magnificent, gleaming-white eight-point buck. The stag and the fox exchanged glances. Then, as if that had been a signal, they charged the Dementors together in one perfectly coordinated motion.

With the Patronuses in pursuit, the Dementors fled through the door, down the corridor and away. The torches flared back to life, brightening the infirmary to a clarity Snape had never seen yet in Azkaban.

He sought Potter's eyes, as his fox had sought the stag's. Those eyes, when Potter turned to him, were round in wonder.

"That was some Patronus Charm, eh, ma--, I mean, Snape?" He turned slowly in a circle, lifting his eyes to the flaming torches, taking in their brilliance with a look of longing delight on his face. He didn't seem to see the mildewy, soot-streaked walls and the shabby, manacle-clad infirmary beds that the torches revealed to Snape. "We didn't just dispel those Dementors. We crushed them. They'll be out of the game for hours, maybe days. They won't be able to bother the prisoners--"

Prisoners. Potter stopped as though he'd remembered at the same moment Snape had done.

"Ruskin," Snape said. He ran to his bed, Potter beside him .

Ruskin was still there. Snape, who didn't want to look at his face, looked instead at his wrists, cut deep by the manacles against which he'd struggled. He looked at Ruskin's chest, rising and falling, heard the faint rattle in Ruskin's throat. He was still breathing. Still existing.

He made himself look then into Ruskin's eyes. They were an emptiness of forget-me-not blue, devoid of the fire of Ruskin's great intelligence and spirit, drained of his life.

Drained of his soul. For Snape could see the bruises around Ruskin's mouth, where a Dementor had fixed its great, sucking maw and drunk Ruskin's soul to the dregs.

"It Kissed him," whispered Potter.

"That's what they do, Potter," Snape said. "Didn't you know?" He gestured toward Ruskin's husk. "Remember what he said? That's what the man you work for wants." Snape jabbed his finger again at Ruskin. "This is what Barty Crouch wants."

Potter didn't seem to be listening. "My God, my God," he whispered. He knelt beside Ruskin and took Ruskin's hand in both his own.

"Potter, let go of him!" Snape warned. Just looking at Ruskin made Snape's stomach churn with nausea. "Don't touch him; you're no Healer! Let me get Shaftsbury--"

Potter groaned aloud, yet he clutched Ruskin's hand harder than ever. The vacuum that was Ruskin was surely sucking agonizingly at the warmth of life and magical power that it felt in Potter, but Potter seemed to lack either the strength or the sense to break away. He groaned again and, bowing his head over the hands he'd clasped around Ruskin's hand, wept in harsh, tearing sobs. "Oh, God, what are we doing here!" he cried. "What am I doing? What have I done?"

It wasn't fatal to touch one of the Kissed without the protection of a Healer's charms. Was it? Snape didn't think so. But it would take a Healer to release Potter if he didn't have the ability to let Ruskin go of his own accord, and if he weren't released soon, he might sicken for weeks.

Snape didn't dare leave Potter to search for Shaftsbury. Where was Magwitch? he wondered. Had he fled? Had dozens of Dementors been too much even for a creature as insensitive as a half-goblin?

Snape didn't have the courage to stick his head into the corridor to look. There'd be consequences for it, he knew. Consequences for all of it. Nevertheless, he went to the infirmary fireplace and called Warden Reid.