For the first time in his life, Harry enjoyed Potions.

Tedious hours of cutting, mincing, dicing, cubing, desiccating, pulverizing, weighing, measuring, blending and stewing followed by precisely timed and orchestrated brewing…Harry could, for the first time, truly appreciate that Potions was an art form based on a firm foundation of science and magic.

"Why so much peppermint?" he asked as he cut the leaves into very fine strips.

"Settles the stomach," answered Snape. "You know that, already, Harry. Think."

Harry grinned. The further they got into this night, the more often Snape called him Harry.

He slept on a cot Snape transfigured during the wee hours of the morning, when the preparation was finally completed and the brewing was underway. Curled up on his side, he imagined he was smaller, younger, comforted by the sounds of quiet work surrounding him.

To his very great surprise, Bill Weasley was there working with Snape when he next opened his eyes. He was sitting on a chair close to the cauldron. As Harry watched, he stirred the potion twice, counter-clockwise. Harry watched him for a few minutes. Bill's hair was loose on his shoulders and his shirt sleeves were pushed back past his elbows. For the first time, Harry noticed the tattoo around Bill's wrist. It looked like a circlet of small, intertwined runes and was set directly behind the wrist bone. A muffled snore drew Harry's attention to a second cot in the room. Snape was stretched out on it, uncovered, sleeping on his side with one hand almost brushing the floor. Harry's eyes closed again.

Quiet voices woke him hours later. Squinting, he could make out Snape and Bill standing next to the cauldron. Snape appeared to be decanting the potion and Bill was cleaning the preparation area.

"Mom should be back in an hour or so," Bill was saying. "Who else do you have lined up?"

Lined up? What were they talking about?

Snape had pushed a cork into a bottle and was working on a second one. "Lupin, of course," he answered. "And Minerva is fetching Ms. Lovegood around noon if he isn't through it by then."

"Xenophilius' daughter?" asked Bill. "That Lovegood?"

Snape chuckled. "Could there be another?"

"A bit off his rocker, that one," answered Bill. "Bet the daughter has had a rough time of it, losing her mother like that. She must be a close friend, then? Of Harry?"

Harry made sure his eyes were shut. He didn't want to be caught listening to this conversation and knew he should just give it up and go back to sleep. From the way Bill and Snape were talking, he was in for a rough day.

Snape's low voice floated across the room to Harry before he drifted off again. "She seems to have become a friend of the entire Gryffindor group this past year—hard as it is to admit, she's better off for it. Harry thinks highly of her—she was one of only a few people that appeared in his first sea dream."

Harry heard Bill's surprised "hmph" but nothing else. He couldn't have been sleeping long at all before someone was shaking him lightly by the shoulder.

"Wake up, Harry." He groggily opened his eyes and found Mrs. Weasley bending down next to him. She handed him his glasses, which someone must have taken from his face when he fell asleep. He glanced around but the potions lab was empty. "We just need to walk back down to your room, love. Severus and Healer Gannon are getting things ready down there now."

Harry sat up and turned to put his feet on the floor. He was still fully dressed down to his trainers and he felt decidedly grubby.

"Any chance I can shower first?" he asked Mrs. Weasley as he stood up. He had to use the loo too but didn't want to announce that to Mrs. Weasley.

"Of course, dear," she answered. "That's a very good idea, in fact. All your things are back in your room, I suppose?"

They walked together back toward the Auror's Ward cubicles. Today, only one other curtain was pulled closed, the rest standing open to reveal identical beds, tables and cabinets. Snape and Healer Gannon, along with two other healers—a foreign looking man with a long pointed beard and a middle-aged woman with rhinestone-studded cat's eye glasses—were standing around a tall counter in the middle of the common area.

"Harry is going to have a quick shower," said Mrs. Weasley as Harry fetched his bag from his cubicle.

He felt immensely better physically after his shower, though it couldn't erase the sick and apprehensive feeling he had inside. Snape had stuck his head in the shower room and directed him to put on his pyjamas and robe when he was finished and a few minutes later, Harry heard the door open and close again. When he came out of the shower to dress, a new pair of slippers—moccasin style with warm padded liners—had appeared with his other clothes. He slid them on, forgoing socks, and padded back to his bed, pretending the three mediwizards and Severus had not all stopped talking and were not all standing there staring at him as he walked by.

Surprisingly, Mrs. Weasley wasn't in his room. He shoved his bag on the countertop on the edge of the curtained area and pulled down the bed's covers. Even though he'd slept last night, the clean, cool white sheets were inviting and he thought briefly of his luxury-liner of a waterbed back at Shell Cottage. He was really starting to miss his days there and hoped he still remembered how to meditate and pull himself into his occluded state when they were done at St. Mungo's.

He was still eying the bed when Snape appeared at the doorway.

"Ready?" Snape asked, indicating the bed.

Harry sat down and pulled his legs in, settling against the headboard. Snape walked over to the foot of the bed and rested his hands on the short foot board there. He looked very tired. Harry could see the beginnings of puffy bags under his eyes, stark looking against Snape's pale skin.

"I suggested that you occlude and then have the potion spelled into your system," he began. "I had hoped that would spare you from experiencing the pain again. However, the healers will not allow this. They have made it abundantly clear that your vitals must be closely monitored during the process, and that occlusion may mask respiratory or other problems such as elevated blood pressure or rapid heartbeat potentially caused by the potion."

Harry pulled his knees up a little closer to his chest. "Do you know how long it will last?" he asked.

Snape opened his mouth, closed it again, paused. Finally, he shook his head. "No, I must admit I do not know. I have done what I could to alter the composition of the potion in order to hasten the desired end result. Unfortunately, we did not have time to test it or a willing subject to test it on. I believe that start to finish we are likely looking at eight hours as I hope to have achieved a two-thirds reduction in the treatment time. My guess is that you had at least 24 hours of lines with the Blood Quill—Minerva looked up the detention logs last night." He paused, looking significantly at Harry. "It made her physically ill—she'll have Umbridge's soul if the Dementor's don't get it first."

Harry raised his gaze from his knees up to Snape.

"I'll be awake the whole time, right?"

"Yes, though there is always the chance you will lose consciousness."

He didn't say 'from the pain' but Harry didn't need to hear the words.

"Someone will be in here? Someone I know?"

"Of course. We have that covered," replied Snape.

Harry looked up at Snape again, willing him to understand what he needed. Despite the progress they had made these last weeks, he was still unable to ask.

Snape stared at Harry for a long moment.

"I will be in the room as long as I am able, Harry, even if someone else is here as well." He nodded as Harry settled back into the pillows, then turned and left the room.

Fifteen minutes later the monitoring charms were in place, Harry's arm was secured in a binding spell that kept the elbow straight and the palm facing down and Healer Gannon was seated at the foot of the bed with his wand in hand and floating quill and parchment hovering at his left shoulder. Snape held a single vial of potion, dark green in color, and a glass of water.

"All in one go," he said to Harry as he handed him the potion. Harry took it with his left hand and held it to his lips, tipping it up and into his mouth. He grimaced slightly at the taste but swallowed quickly. Snape took the bottle back from him and handed him the water.

"Chaser," said Harry, trying to grin. He drank it down in several gulps and handed the glass back to Snape.

"Reverse order," said Snape. "Which means you will feel the effects of the Blood Quill first." As if on cue, Harry's face contorted and he cried out. All eyes traveled down to his hand where an odd puff of red smoke had just escaped the faint I must not tell lies scar. The puffs continued quickly, the smoke proving to be a very fine mist of blood. Harry managed not to cry out with every puff, which he soon came to realize represented a single line he had written with the Blood Quill. He pushed his head back into the pillows. His face had a permanent grimace and his left hand clenched and unclenched in sympathetic pain. Fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes. Forty-five. Mrs. Weasley had come back into the room, intending to relieve Snape, but he waved her into a chair on the other side of the bed. An hour and there had been no let up to the pace of the puffs of bloody mist. Healer Gannon was still standing in the same spot.

"Another hour of this and he'll need a blood replenishing potion," he said.

"I anticipate eight hours," ground out Snape. "I told you that before we began this process."

"You didn't mention he'd be bleeding out," replied Healer Gannon, managing to sound professional through the criticism. Harry hoped he wasn't really bleeding out—that sounded rather ominous—but currently he didn't really care about anything other than trying to breathe through the stabbing feel of the quill in his skin.

Snape and Mrs. Weasley traded places after the first blood-replenishing potion, which Harry gagged down, only half aware of what he was doing. He felt the glass of water at his lips and gratefully took a few swallows. When Mrs. Weasley pulled a cool cloth out of her bag a moment later and wiped his sweaty forehead, he leaned into her touch. She pushed the damp fringe back from his eyes and wiped his head again before resting the cloth there. Harry closed his eyes. It felt unbelievably wonderful to have a small spot of comfort while his hand continued to ache and burn.

He was sinking into a warm cocoon, unconsciously heading toward the womb-space of his occluded world, when Snape's voice brought him back to full awareness.

"Molly, go fetch Albus, please. Ask him to come at once." Snape's voice was terse. He pushed the comforting cloth off of Harry's forehead. Harry forced his eyes open.

"What is it Severus? He's been doing very well, considering…"

But Healer Gannon understood. "Oh sweet Merlin," he whispered. "The scar. We forgot about the scar."

"Wait…" Harry was trying to sit up now, struggling against Snape's heavy hand on his forehead. He groaned as a particularly sharp pain bit into his right hand. His left hand sought the scar on his forehead—all that was left of the most horrific act of dark magic possible. His eyes, staring straight up, met Snape's, staring straight down.

"It's just my arm, right?" he said, pleading with Snape. "The potion is just for my arm…."

Snape shook his head minutely. Harry would have thought he was holding together very well if he hadn't heard his voice—thin and tight, rough with both emotion and lack of sleep.

"It was a general potion, Harry, ingested and distributed throughout your body through your bloodstream. It will go after all residual dark magic in your body… all of it."

Harry clearly saw Mrs. Weasley, by now near the cubicle's curtained entrance, put a hand to her mouth before ducking out to fetch Dumbledore.

Puff. Another fine red mist hovered over Harry's hand.

"'s OK," he said, still looking up at Snape's shadowed face. He half-grinned, remembering Snape's words of comfort. "That which does not kill us makes us stronger," he repeated.

He didn't understand Snape's sudden smile. But then, he was just repeating Snape. He wasn't thinking about exactly what those words meant when it came to the Boy Who Lived.