Severus took a chair and moved it near the bed.

He sat down, smoothed the wrinkles out of his robe and threw a surreptitious glance at the boy.

Everything seemed ok. Until he saw the boy's face. He was awake.

Severus Snape, feared Potions Master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, felt his mouth go dry.

So it begins. It was between him and Potter now.

The silence stretched itself between the two of them and Severus knew it was his turn to move. But this was a game he was not sure to win. He did not even know what the prize would be. Or the price.

The boy was waking up way too soon, much sooner than he had expected and he warily thought that he needed more time: he did not even know the true extent of the boy's injuries and McGonagall's emotional and limited résumé certainly had not allowed him to work out an adequate plan of action yet. And he badly needed a plan. His whole life was based on well thought and executed plans. He did not like improvising.

In his branch - potions as well as his other "employment" -  improvisation was nothing more than a suicide attempt.

After a few seconds he finally made up his mind and looked at the ill boy again and he realized that maybe he would be granted a little more time: Potter was not wearing his usual silly glasses and he could see his eyes well, they were dull and glazed as if the boy were not really awake, but had simply been disturbed by the commotion in his room. If he was indeed so high on potions as Minerva had hinted at and as tired and feverish as he himself had seen just a couple of hours before, then the boy should be sleeping a bit longer at least.

He held himself still, almost holding his breath, and - as he had hoped - Thanks Merlin! -, the boy slowly closed his eyes and dozed off again.

I have no time to lose now.

He quickly went to Pomfrey's office. There was a small note pinned on the table, stating that she had to go back to Hogsmeade for some emergency in the neighbourhood and would be back as soon as possible.

How convenient. So convenient that it looked almost too easy. And Albus certainly was not above tampering... Anyway, at least he would not have the resident Matron hovering over him, even though he could have done with a short briefing on the brat's conditions. He snatched Potter's file from Pomfrey's pristine desk and he read it fast, trying to gauge the boy's health as quickly as possible.

But there was too much. Too many serious injuries. What had this child been subjected to? That he was even alive denoted a ferocious defiance. The-Boy-Who-Lived, indeed.

And even more astounding was that he had managed to act with a semblance of normalcy for so long.

He went back to Potter's room and silently resumed his position near the bed. He needed time to digest the results of Madame Pomfrey's scans.

The damage the boy had endured at the Dark Lord's hands (or mind) was bad, but nothing they could not cure with potions and healing charms easily enough. It would maybe take a little longer than usual, but it would not be a problem. 

The damage inflicted by the muggles, on the other hand, was appalling. It had been a massacre.

No, torture.

He mentally amended, because it was clear that it had not been a single event, the abuse had been ongoing and systematic. Some of the injuries must have occurred years before, when he was only a small child, a toddler even. Broken bones seemed to be a normal occurrence for Potter, since one arm alone had been broken three times at least. The scan on the other arm had not provided a clear result since it was the bone that Pomfrey had had to re-grow a couple of years before. Natural frailty? The boy's own recklessness?

Snape strongly doubted that. It was true that the brat had almost broken his neck playing Quidditch once a week during the previous 6 years, but he had come out of it with sound bones most of the time. No one with natural bone frailty would ever survive his daily escapades on the Firebolt. Not to speak of his yearly escapades with His Evilness himself.

He had to acknowledge the truth and finally open his eyes: The Boy Who Lived had been abused since he was a toddler and none of them had noticed. They mistook his reluctance to go home for the holidays for arrogance and conceit, while the boy had just been afraid to face another summer of pain.

Merlin! He had been hating the brat ever since before he gad even been born, but he would never allow any child to suffer such mistreatment from their family. Not even Potter. And it was not as if Potter himself had done anything to hide the abuse. Not the physical abuse, of course, that had been well hidden. Way too well.

But the other signs had been there: defiance, fierce independence, reluctance to turn to adults as well. As well as the desperate fight to cover his memories during Occlumency. They had been monumental fools.

He now had to admit that even though Potter had actually wanted to learn Occlumency he would not probably have succeeded in any case. How can you learn to shield your mind and hide your innermost feelings, while your whole being is desperately trying to hide one single set of memories?

Not that he had tried too hard to teach him, really.

It was a painful admission, but Severus Snape was not the kind of person to hide behind stupid excuses. Although if he would go to great lengths not to have to admit of ever being wrong to anyone else, he had learnt from his own mistakes not to lie to himself, at least, and the price he paid for this hard won knowledge had been way too high.

The pure and simple truth was that they had wronged the boy and he had done so more than all the other teachers put together. He had been blinded by his hatred for James Potter and had exacted his revenge on Potter's son.

Not that the brat had not deserved most of the punishments he had received, but he had gone out of his way to pick on him. He had punished him in the worst possible way, thus dooming a relationship that was turning out to be essential for the demise of the Dark Lord.

Potter certainly had his faults - and many of them, mind you! - but he was the one who had failed, because he was the teacher. And now they had to start over and Severus very much doubted that any of them would ever be able to forget the past. Not after last year.

He squashed the not too faint glimmer of guilt he felt towards the boy and went back to the file.

The worst damage had been healed already, but some of the injuries were too grave and too old to be cured at all. The burns on the right hand had been treated and  - although the skin would be tender for a week or so - there would be no long lasting damage.

The left hand was another matter though. According to the file, Pomfrey had tried everything she could think of, but it was obvious that Harry would not be able to fully use the hand ever again. The hand had been crushed for the first time some two months before and the nerves had been damaged too badly. Maybe if the boy had not been submitted to Cruciatus it would have been possible to do something more, but magical and muggle damages put together on a two months time span were simply too much, there was nothing left to work on. According to the file, Madame Pomfrey hoped to give Harry back at least 30 percent of mobility on that hand. A couple of fingers, at the best. Not much but better than the alternative, he guessed, the wrist had at last been set properly and would be fine in a couple of days.

He knew that he would be the one to have to break the news to the boy and he certainly was not looking forward to it. On the previous day, some evil part of him - the one which still held James Potter and Sirius Black accountable for everything bad that had ever happened to him - would have been pleased to inform the spoiled and pampered brat that from then on there was something in his life which would not be perfect ever again, but he now loathed to have to tell an abused child that his hand would never be the same again.

How can you tell a 16-year-old something like that?

Carefully.

He sighed.

The other bruises and cracked ribs and assorted wounds were well on the way of mending, even though the boy would be quite sore for a while. The sooner magical means were applied, the sooner they worked. A whole summer was much too long a period for any injury to remain untreated.

Almost out of his own volition Snape put his hand on Harry's forehead to check on his temperature. The boy had been burning with fever just a few hours before, but now he was only slightly warm and he breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief. Harry's wounds had become infected and the fever alone could have killed him off easily. The infection had probably set in a few days before Potter returned to Hogwarts, maybe going to Diagon Alley with Lupin had been the final straw... they would never know; anyway Snape knew enough about healing to recognize that an infection deriving from untreated broken bones or any other internal wound, if left untreated, could kill in a very short span of time. Potter had been walking on a very fine edge.

It was still a miracle that he had survived.

Snape had to wonder if he really had. Madame Pomfrey's file was nothing but accurate and he knew that the boy was not in danger of dying, not anymore, but he found - to his dismay - that he was far more worried about his mental health than his physical welfare. How much of the brat's behaviour was the result of his heritage and how much the result of his abusive upbringing?

It was clear that he would not be able to interact with Potter normally. He had to take Pomfrey's blasted potions into account (and he was absolutely sure now that Pomfrey had wanted Potter to be as emotional as possible) and go with the tide. The boy's mind on a good day was almost as tangled as his hair and today was not a good day.

Still... the boy had managed to function more or less coherently since he had arrived at Hogwarts, even after everything that had happened in the past years and culminating in the mutt's death. No, Potter was not the goody naïve Gryffindor everyone saw. Or wanted to see. That was the starting point.

He would have to reign in his temper and take baby steps until he found the truth about the boy's hidden power and everything else that had transpired in the last day.

He took Potter's right hand in his much bigger one and quietly inspected the palm. Instead of the angry burn he had seen before now there was a new layer of pink and tender skin. The skin was still slightly inflamed, but he knew that it would look like just like regular skin in about 12 more hours. Just to make sure that Potter would not manage to hurt himself in the meanwhile, he carefully dabbed the hand with the salve Madame Pomfrey had left on the nightstand. Once he was satisfied with the job, he gently turned the hand over to inspect the rest of it. The reddened scars on the back immediately captured his attention. They looked inflamed and angry and had a matching hue to the ominous scar marring the boy's forehead. Dark Magic.

The lines were a bit blurry, but still readable. "I will not tell lies".

Umbridge.

He fell back on his chair heavily, Potter's hand still carefully ensconced in his own, inexplicably enraged by the sight of the scars and their meaning.  He had heard rumours about the abuse perpetrated during the Toad's detentions, but he had never seen it first hand.

He breathed deeply to calm himself a bit and gently lowered the hand on the coverlet, adjusting the beddings as precisely as he would stir a precious potion.

Anyway, Potter seemed to be sleeping peacefully enough and he decided to let him slumber a little bit longer: they had a lot to accomplish and little time to do so, but the boy needed to rest as well.

He busied himself with the latest potions journal (rubbish!) and kept a vigil eye on Potter, it was actually no longer than an hour later that Potter started to show signs of discomfort.

Since the potions Madame Pomfrey had administered would last for eight more hours at least, it could only be a nightmare.

The boy's movements were sluggish at first, then he started to trash more violently, whimpering a little and getting tangled in the sheet covering him. The left hand seemed to be twitching and spasming without control and Snape hurried to try and calm the boy down, before he could damage himself.

But as soon as the Potions Master gently touched Harry's shoulder, the boy awoke with a start, jerking away and unconsciously trying to get out of Snape's reach.

The movement was so sudden that Potter managed to get off the bed and squeeze himself in the narrow corner between his bed and the wall before Snape could even think of trying and restrain him. He did not really seem aware of his surroundings and he was panting heavily, curled on himself, his hands in the same protective stance he had shown in the classroom earlier.

Snape did not dare think how much the sudden move must have hurt and wondered how it were possible, that a sixteen-year-old boy could make himself as small as a cat.