Before the Dawn – Chapter 8

By jharad17

Disclaimer: Who me? Nah, I'm not responsible for these characters. Only the crazy situations I put them in.

Warnings: Language.

Previously:

Shoulders slightly hunched, he headed for the door and the stairs beyond. "Fine. I'll see you later."

Behind him, once the boy was out of hearing range, Severus swore heatedly. Things were off to a rocky start, and were bound to get worse before they got better. Harry needed to sleep, and soon, or his temper - and Severus' already strained patience - would have both of them at each other's throats before nightfall.

How right he was. . . .

Alone in his room, Harry fumed. Even though he had suggested it, he hadn't wanted Snape to tell him to leave. He wanted Snape to help him with his muscles, and all the other stuff, but all that aggravating man would do was harp at him and not answer his questions. He expected Harry to answer his questions all the time, with all his tea time talk and feelings and everything, but he never wanted to answer anything in return. It wasn't fair!

Besides, how were they supposed to learn to get along if Snape sent him away all the time? He wanted Harry to sleep, but he knew Harry couldn't sleep without nightmares. He'd forced the truth about that out of Harry, after all, along with the Silencing spell Harry'd been using and the Excito spell, too. And anyway, how was he supposed to sleep when he was all worked up like this? The exercises had exhausted him, but his heart was still beating fast. From their argument, too.

Harry glared out the window at the fields and low rock walls he could see in the distance, criss-crossing the landscape. A fairly strong breeze made the occasional copse of trees lean away from the oncoming wind, as if paying some sort of weird arboreal obeisance, and suddenly, Harry wanted to be outside. Needed it. Desperately. Except for their quick trip across the yard when they had first arrived here, Harry had not been out of doors for far too long. Weeks, even. And Snape had said it was safe for Harry to be out there, now that the wards had acknowledged him. And Snape had said that Harry should get back on his broom, too. Specifically, to rebuild his nonexistent muscles.

The memory of the look on Snape's face as he said that, about Harry's muscles, when Harry had been panting for breath, reared up once more. He had made Harry want to hit him in the face, with his insinuations about Harry's weakness.

Damn him, Harry snarled under his breath. Damn him to hell. What did Snape know of muscle weakness from being fucking Crucio'd nearly to death, or fucking brain damage from being bloody choked by a bloody lunatic of an uncle? Did Snape think this was easy? Did he think Harry liked to be called soft, or reminded that he couldn't bear to leave the dungeons? Did Snape think he wanted to be a coward? A cowardly monster, he corrected himself, thinking again about what he had done, and what he had wanted to do, to Lucius bloody Malfoy.

The few shelves around him, as well as the roll top desk, rattled enough to cause various knick-knacks to clink together, and Harry squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath, swallowing his rage. He really needed to cool off some.

Outside. Yes. With his broom. Yes.

Maybe he'd use a little Excito to take the edge off his exhaustion, and help keep his wits about him, too, so he didn't doze while flying. One more spell couldn't hurt him, not with all the times he'd cast it already. Just once.

Snape wouldn't need to know.

After all, Harry hadn't promised not to use the spell, he reasoned, ignoring the little voice inside that told him he'd done as much to both Snape and Madam Pomfrey, even if he hadn't used the specific word "promise."

The little voice was nothing. The little voice could go hang.

Lifting his wand to his temple, he whispered, "Excito Sursum."

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Severus put the finishing touches on the minestrone soup by grating fresh parmesan over the top of each large serving he had ladled into the heavy crockery bowls he'd taken from one of the cabinets. The fragrant herbs of the hearty vegetable and bean soup mingled with the sharp tang of the cheese, and Severus gave his portion another long sniff, smiling slightly, before he put the two bowls on the table and went to call Harry from his room. There was little, he felt, that could go wrong with hot soup on a chilly, windy day.

Harry was not in his room.

At first, Severus was not concerned, thinking perhaps the boy had been in the sitting room all this while, possibly with a book, instead of lying down as Severus had earlier suggested - strongly - that he do. He'd known that Harry could not have been sleeping for two reasons. First, Snape had made sure no Silencing Wards could be erected on the boy's bedroom, and second, since Harry did not sleep without having nightmares these days, Severus would have heard him wake, screaming, if he had succumbed to sleep.

He didn't doubt Harry's word about the frequency of his nightmares, knowing Harry had little reason to lie about something the boy probably thought made him look weak. Above almost anything else, he knew Harry detested other people thinking he was weak or needed help. That attitude was why helping Harry was often so difficult.

Severus noted, in passing, that Harry's trunk was in a corner, and that his school books and supplies were on his desk, as was the journal that had first truly alerted Severus to the danger Harry was putting himself in by not sleeping. Taking a less cursory inventory, then, he noted one door of the boy's wardrobe slightly ajar, so presumably his clothes were put away, too. Harry had very little in the way of personal possessions, especially after the cursed Death Eaters had searched the place he'd once lived, in Little Whinging, and had taken the few things allowed him by the Muggles. But they were visible, too: the picture album, which Lupin had returned, with photos of his parents and his yearmates at Hogwarts, was on the small table beside his bed; and the thrice-damned Invisibility cloak from the boy's father was crammed into one of the nooks of the roll top desk. Nothing else.

Satisfied that Harry was not to be found in his room, and that the boy had indeed settled himself into Dormenhause to stay, at least for a little while, Severus turned from the door. He entered the sitting room, expecting to see the boy curled up on the sofa, or in one of the comfortable looking padded chairs in front of the fireplace.

Harry was not in the sitting room either.

Now Severus was concerned, but not unduly, not yet. Perhaps Harry had just gone outside, to cool off from their earlier sniping. And surely, had he done so, Harry would have realized he needed to stay within the perimeter of the stone wall so as to stay within Dormenhause's protective wards.

Surely, he had.

Still, it had been several hours since Harry had left their exercise room, and though it was warmer here than at Hogwarts, there was quite a breeze blowing outside. . . . As Severus headed for the front door, he hoped that the boy had thought to wear a warm cloak, at least. Sometimes, the boy was more than cavalier with his own health, a habit Severus intended to break him of as soon as possible. Starting, of course, with weaning him off the nasty spell which had wreaked such havoc on his sleep patterns and capacity for dreaming, and thus, for replenishing his magical core.

Harry's trainers were gone from the entry hall, Severus noted as he entered the tiny room. They would have been dried instantly by the charms put on this room, so he wasn't worried about the boy going about in wet shoes. And his cloak was gone, too. Good; at least he had some sense. . . . Severus paused. Blinked. He knew he had missed something important, but it was not till he turned round again that he realized what else was missing.

Harry's broom.

After wracking his brain for a few brief moments, Severus knew he had not seen the blasted Firebolt in the boy's room either. Wanting to convince himself that surely, the boy had not taken his broom out to fly, he shook his head. He wouldn't have gone, when he had agreed only a few hours ago that he would not do so without Severus' accompaniment, right?

Surely not.

Yet, when he opened the front door, catching a gust of wind full in the face, cold enough it sucked the air right out of his lungs, his gaze was drawn immediately to a scrap of red near the edge of the property. A flag, which looked very much like a Gryffindor scarf, flapped from the low branches of a scraggly tree, marking the dark heap lying below. The heap was sprawled across the low stone wall at the base of the tree like a sack of potatoes, and looked quite a lot like a body.

Severus ran.

Never having been much of a sprinter, especially in cross-country races, Severus would later marvel slightly at his ability to get from the front steps of Dormenhause to Harry's side so quickly. He just ran, without once tripping over an exposed rock or root, nor flying headlong into the wall once he came to a halt at the boy's side. But all he could think about during his wild flight was, "Oh no, oh god, oh no, please no . . . "

Harry's face was a mass of blood and gashes, and his legs were at an odd angle to his torso. Even as Severus pushed his fingers into the boy's neck to feel for a pulse, he was bracing himself for the worst.

Yet, the boy lived. Though thready and weak, the pulse of Harry's heart pinked against his fingertips, and Severus nearly sobbed in relief. But there was so much blood everywhere, he hardly knew what to do first. Stop the bleeding . . . or, what if Harry had punctured a lung . . . he must get him inside, out of the cold. . . . but first, to check the spine. . . .

Severus had never been so jittery before when faced with this kind of situation, and for a long minute, he stood stalk still, unable to make a decision. Finally, choking on his own breath - he would never in a million years confess to weeping in fear or consternation - he closed his eyes and drew on his own Occlumency skills, wrapping calm and equanimity around him like the cloak he wished he was wearing.

"Stupid, stupid child," he hissed at last, and opened his eyes to look with new sight at the boy, taking in the injuries with a more practiced, objective air. "Idiotic, imbecile of a boy," he whispered to himself as he spent the next minute or two running diagnostics, and then began the process of Healing.

Not till he had the bleeding stopped, both internally and externally, some quarter hour later, did Severus move Harry indoors. He levitated Harry into the sitting room, in front of the fireplace, and after he lit the fire and spelled Harry into a Healing sleep, he spent the next few hours fixing him up. As he had done on several previous occasions in his life, Severus fell into a sort of Healing trance. He summoned several potions from below stairs when warranted and fed them directly to the boy, and once paused long enough to take a sip of water to salve his parched throat, but otherwise, he did not stop chanting spells or monitoring Harry's condition for the next four hours. He barely bothered to take a breath.

Dark had fully fallen by the time Severus looked up again. The fire was the only light in the room - in the house - and its flickering flames transformed the bookcases surrounding them into bulky, squarish beasts. As one of his last spells, he pulled an armchair closer to the sofa where Harry slept, which the boy would do now till he woke naturally, so he could drop down into it without needing to move any more. While one of his hands clutched his wand, his other still rested on Harry's forehead. He brushed gently at the boy's fringe, exposing the puckered, reddened flesh of the lightning bolt scar, before he let his hand fall to his side and sank back in the chair. He was absolutely exhausted. His clothes stuck to his body, at his back and sides, soaked with sweat. Healing took a lot out of him; out of any Healer, truth be told, and he had not been officially trained in that art.

Little evidence of Harry's accident remained but for the blood, which Severus now removed with a non-verbal Tergeo. His hands shook as the last of the blood vanished, trembling as if he had just undergone a dozen rounds of the Dark Lord's punishment. He clenched them tightly together, as if that would make them stop. But trembles wracked his whole body, and he felt like he was flying apart. Though he recognized the sensation as an excess of adrenaline, now that the emergency was past, he could do little about it. He had to remain here to monitor Harry's state, especially if the boy started to dream. Harry's nightmares would just top this whole situation off, he thought sourly, with cherries and a bit of whipped cream.

With a grimace, he stared at the boy's pale face, noting the lines of tension in Harry's face, even in sleep. Neither of them were like to get a break, he thought. But if Harry would just think betimes, and not run off like this, foolishly putting his life in danger at a whim. Merlin, Medraut and Morgause, what do I do with the boy? How can this ever work?

Obviously, Harry had completely disdained the rules - several of them - as they had been laid down. Severus didn't know whether his defiance was just pique, due to their earlier tiff, or for some other reason entirely. Perhaps this escapade meant his impulsiveness was less under his control than they'd thought. Merlin knew the boy was impulsive, though Severus had been hoping that the new, magical lesions would be helpful, rather than harmful.

Regardless, the two of them would need to rationally discuss this whole mess, despite the fact that Severus wanted, more than almost anything else, to just avoid what he knew was going to be an unpleasant confrontation. He was tired and angry and uncertain if he had done the right thing in bringing Harry here.

Perhaps he was completely unfit to be the boy's guardian.

Maybe it was time to call "uncle" and bow to the Headmaster's views, as well as Poppy Pomfrey's. Though he had thought he would be able to help Harry, perhaps they were right. Perhaps he was not up to this challenge. Had he had bitten off more than he could chew?

With a soft sigh, he shook his head, now resting in his hands. What did it matter if he had no reserves left, or if he was at the end of his rope with Harry? What other options did the boy have? Who else, if not he, did Harry have? Who else would take care of him, help him get over these trials, or even prepare him properly to meet the Dark Lord in a fight to the death.

No one. No one else, only Severus. Only Severus could take on this job, even if he did make a hash of it.

Impossibly, utterly spent, he waited for the boy to wake.

XOXOXOXXOXOXOXOOX

The screaming started an hour later. As they did every time, Harry's nightmares broke Severus' heart. Once more, he battled with Harry, first to waken him, and then to calm him down enough to breathe. Afterwards, when the boy's hyperventilating had given way to soft, almost inaudible sounds of distress, they talked in low tones about the nightmare, or rather, Severus tried to get Harry to talk. But there was little new material: Harry's uncle committing a series of progressively more bloody beatings, along with the boy's sense that he could not breathe and could not escape from that particular hell.

While talking, Severus reminded Harry several times of where they were, and who was in the room - and more importantly, who was not. Harry nodded in the right places but looked away when asked to express any of his feelings about the dream aside from, "Was bloody awful."

And then, though it was past half-ten, Severus broached the topic they both were dreading. That he was able to keep an even, level tone spoke wonders for his self-control. "What possessed you to go flying this afternoon?"

When Harry squinched up his face, as if he remembered doing no such thing, Severus decided to enlighten him, a bit more sharply. "I found your body near the Betula Pendula at the edge of the property and spent over four hours patching you back together again, from spleen to spine. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Harry's blank look was almost enough to send him over the edge, but finally the boy seemed to rouse what was left of his brain. Even while his cheeks grew red - which they would not have been able to manage without the recent Blood Replenishing Potion - he offered what he could of an explanation. "I needed to be outside. I haven't hardly been outside in weeks."

"I thought we had agreed you were not to go flying until I could accompany you."

Looking away again, the boy's shoulders came up. "Yeah."

Yeah? Yeah! "What, exactly, is 'yeah' supposed to mean?"

"Um. Er." A sigh, wherein Severus was hard put not to take the boy by the shoulders and shake sense into him. "I forgot."

"I don't believe you."

"You're callin' me a liar?"

"I am. Prove to me that you aren't."

Harry glared. "What? How'm I supposed to do that? You want to rummage 'round in my memories? Fine! Go ahead!"

With narrowed eyes, Severus almost took him up on the offer, but forbore to do so, knowing it would do nothing to resolve this situation. Perhaps Harry had forgotten about their agreement, but it did not explain the rest of his condition, which he had determined whilst doing his diagnostics. He nodded slowly, waited till Harry relaxed minutely, then went in for the kill. "You did, however, use Excito Sursum again, and I have a quite clear memory of your agreement to not use that particular spell again."

The boy's mouth opened and closed like a fish. "How . . ?"

"How I know is completely irrelevant to our discussion. You disobeyed by flying without me, and used a spell you knew was prohibited to you. The combination no doubt led to your crash into the tree, and very nearly, to your death." Severus crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring Harry, who was, characteristically, drawing ever more into himself as Severus lectured. But he would not be deterred. "I will not allow you to endanger yourself in this manner again." After a small pause, he added, "Since I did not see your broom out there when I rescued you, I am not even sure you could engage in like behavior again anyway."

For some unaccountable reason that statement brought tears to Harry's eyes. The damnable broom, given to him by a damnable mutt.

"Oh," Harry whispered. "Are you sure it's not-"

"Of course I'm not," Severus interrupted sharply. "It could be out there, broken in two pieces or ten, for all I know. I was rather pre-occupied, previously, with making sure you didn't bleed out."

"Oh," the boy replied, again, nonsensically. "Can I go and-"

"Absolutely not!" Severus was rapidly losing his temper, and he brought it up on short rein before he lost it completely. But the boy was focusing on the wrong details, as usual! "The bits will still be there when next you are allowed out of the house. At that time, likely to be far in the future, a simple Accio will bring them back."

"But I could-" he started again, more loudly.

"NO!" Severus cut him off. "Merlin's beard, boy, are you truly having so difficult a time understanding? You. Almost. Died. Through your own foolish behavior. Thus, I tell you now: You. Are. Grounded. No flying at all until I deem you responsible enough - and physically well enough - to not get yourself killed. And let me add that, unless we get your reliance on that damnable spell under control, you might never fly again."

"Wait! No! I can't believe you're doing this!" Harry yelled. He squirmed out from under the throw blanket that Severus had laid atop him some time ago, to keep him warm, even in front of the fire. As he fought free, his arms gleamed pale as bone in the reddish light of the sitting room. Though wobbly on his feet, Harry clenched his fists and bared his teeth in a fine old fit. "I have to fly! You can't tell me not to fly!"

"I can, and you won't; not till I believe you're safe on a broom."

Harry's chin went up defiantly. "I am safe!"

Severus sneered at the boy, who was wavering still, despite his anger, as if he might fall down even now. "Not if you're so exhausted that you fall asleep mid-flight!"

"I didn't!"

"You did. Even after casting that spell. And let me tell you, finding out you lied to me and broke your promise about Excito has done nothing to aid your case."

The boy's face screwed up in a fierce rictus, and he screamed, "I hate you!" When Severus, too tired to argue anymore, made no move to contradict him, the boy yelled it again, then fled to his room. The echo of his slamming door rocked the sitting room.

Once more, Severus put his head in his hands, with one thought playing over and over in his mind: Damn.

TBC….

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

A/N: Thanks to all who read and review! Alas, we still didn't get to the potions or the soup or the strings! Well, the soup, kind of, but it's more or less ruined at this juncture. Just leaves more stuff for next time.

Update: I have a new Yahoo group dedicated to readers of all my stories, where you can ask questions about plot, characters, what-have-you, get updates of new chapters, or chat with other readers. Please join, via the link on my profile page! We're waiting for you.