Severus straightened his spine, forcing it out of the painful curve it had adopted during the night. He curled in on himself for warmth, drawing his feet and hands away from the cold stone floor where he had collapsed and fallen into an exhausted sleep. The kink in his spine was the least of his aches this morning.

Grainy, rough nausea clutched at his guts, overriding his chills and aches. He stumbled to the toilet, but he’d eaten nothing yesterday and repeated heaves brought up only acid. He clutched the counter, holding himself upright, and wondered at the continued willingness of his bones to support him. Should his skeleton not have liquefied and left him in a motionless pile? Light assaulted his eyes and he blinked against the migraine that throbbed at the bridge of his nose.

“Severus?” Albus asked. “Are you ill? You’ve missed your morning classes.”

Severus opened his eyes to look at the Headmaster, but the sight of the man’s vivid magenta robes made his eyes water and his stomach lurch. His abused throat suffered another bout of retching, the acid eating at the delicate soft tissues.

Eyes closed, Severus felt hands encircle his forearms and Albus was supporting him, leading him out of the bathroom. It took a long, fuzzy-edged moment before Severus realized that the older man was touching him and then it took another long moment before Severus found the strength to pull away. With his poor coordination, Severus fell into an awkward sprawl on the floor and he curled in on himself, trying to pull himself away from Albus’s hands.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t, dirty,” and the words felt heavy on his tongue. He wasn’t sure if he’d made himself understood. The fog separating him from the world thickened and coiled through his mind.

Hands grasped his shoulders, pulling him up from the floor. Severus bit his lip, the pain cutting through the fog, and said, “Albus, you mustn’t…”

“Hush,” Albus said, putting his fingers against Severus’s mouth. The wrinkled skin was dry and warm. Severus leaned into the touch even though it was wrong, even though he was unclean and unworthy of this gentle touch.

“Now, Severus,” Albus said when he’d been settled into bed. Wrinkled hands drew the blankets up to Severus’s neck and hovered there in a brief caress. “Do you need Poppy’s help? Food or potions? What do you need?”

Shame cut through the fog blocking Severus from the rest of the world. Shaking Albus’s hand off of his shoulder, Severus leaned over the side of the bed to retch again. With his weakness exposed and his filth revealed, Severus couldn’t bear to look Albus in the eye. He hung half-way off the bed, his nose hovering near the floor and the small puddle of stomach acid and bile.

Albus banished the mess, helped Severus back into the bed, and propped him up on a stack of pillows. Albus smoothed Severus’s hair on the pillow and let his wrist rest on Severus’s forehead. “You’re not feverish,” he said.

Severus felt the pulse flutter in the wrist like a butterfly on his forehead, and he reached up to push Albus away. “You mustn’t touch me,” he said. His raw throat opened and closed in painful gasps around the words and his voice lacked its usual dark undertones. He sounded weak, unthreatening, pathetic, and he cringed away from Albus.

“Severus,” Albus said, reaching for him. Severus backed away and nearly fell off the bed.

Albus withdrew his hand at once. “Calm yourself, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You mustn’t touch me,” Severus repeated.

“Whatever is the matter?” Albus sat on the edge of the bed farthest from Severus and made no move to touch him.

Severus wanted nothing more than to disappear, to be far from the pity he saw in the man’s eyes. With his sweat-soaked skin shivering in the chilly air of the dungeons, he drew his arms and legs toward his body and hunched into himself, willing his disappearance.

When he felt a gentle tap against his shaky mental walls, Severus knew it was useless. Curling further in on himself, pulling his Occlumency shields in closer and tighter, he said in a soft, disgustingly breathy and weak voice, “I’m filthy, too dirty to touch. You’ll be contaminated if you touch me.”

“Nonsense,” Albus said. He leaned closer to Severus and maintained unflinching eye contact. “You are not filthy, Severus. Actions do not physically taint a person, and even your worst activities when in Voldemort’s service are not enough to contaminate you. There’s something in your soul that has remained untouched by all evil, something bright and pure.”

Albus leaned even closer to Severus. “You’ve hidden it all this while, behind your masks and all your unpleasantness, but it’s there nonetheless. You are not dirty, Severus.”

Severus inched further away from Albus. “Spare me the platitudes. No pretty philosophy can disguise filth.”

“Oh, Severus,” Albus said. He pushed through Severus’s shaky Occlumency then, pushed through the shields as though they were made of mist. He went past the surface, past the migraine and the shaking and the sour taste of bile, and went deep into the shadowy, preying insecurities, the formless fears, the half-realized nightmares.

He went so deep that Severus began to tremble, but he stopped before breaching the inner sanctuary of his mind. He stopped there and enveloped Severus’s mind with reassuring caresses, with touch untainted by fear or suspicion, and Severus wanted to sob with terror and joy and remorse.

This was the way Albus had restored him after the horrors of Azkaban, the way Albus had rejuvenated him after the horrors he’d seen as a Death Eater. This intimate, crystalline purity that Albus possessed and shared without question was a purity that was not diminished by the sharing and yet Severus felt a secret squiggle of shame eating at his heart, shame at requiring this comfort, shame that Albus saw all of his inner weaknesses and insecurities and soothed them with his own soul. Albus was clean, his mind vibrated with an uncomplicated joy that came from goodness and righteousness, and if Albus knew what he had done …

Severus broke away from the mental caresses, pulled away from Albus’s comforting touch. Albus relinquished his mind with a final, soft fluttering touch, but retained the physical embrace, holding him close with bony strong arms.

They sat thus for long moments, Severus’s spine pressed against Albus’s chest, Severus’s vertebrae resonating with Albus’s heartbeat. Unworthy of the contact, feeling a residue of filth and contamination that still clung to him despite Albus’s soothing mental balm, Severus could not bring himself to resist the embrace.

A shimmering, silvery form passed through the stone wall and then the Bloody Baron was standing before them. “Headmaster,”