Sleeping Beauty and the Half-Blood Prince by Lemon Curd
Summary: Voldemort went after the Longbottoms first. Neville is the Boy Who Lived, and Harry is the boy whose parents were tortured.
Alone and forgotten, Harry lives in the cupboard under the stairs. But some nights, some precious nights, he dreams of a dark man who takes him to see his mother, a sleeping princess in an enchanted castle.

Severus Snape never intended to do anything more than visit Lily, sit at her bedside and, perhaps, apologize once more, even if the healers say she cannot hear him. But then, something happens, Severus does not think things through, and now he has to hide a comatose Lily in his quarters at Hogwarts.
Categories: Healer Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required)
Snape Flavour: Overly-protective Snape
Genres: Hurt/Comfort
Media Type: None
Tags: Child fic
Takes Place: 0 - Pre Hogwarts (before Harry is 11)
Warnings: Neglect
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 4 Completed: No Word count: 11573 Read: 3645 Published: 03 Mar 2021 Updated: 03 Aug 2021
Chapter 3 by Lemon Curd
Severus had just finished brewing the nutrition potion when he heard steps behind him. Accustomed to Dumbledore’s habit of interrupting him, he didn’t look up from his work.

“A nutrition potion?” Dumbledore sounded only mildly curious, but if Severus gave the wrong answer, he could ruin everything.

“I have realized that eating is not the most efficient use of my time. Brewing this potion costs only half the time it would cost me to eat.”

Dumbledore sighed. Severus knew he had chosen the right answer.

“I must insist that you have some tea.”

“Fine. But only because I know arguing with you would waste even more time.”

Dumbledore didn’t chuckle. Something was wrong. More wrong than Lily being in a coma, that was. The Potters’ misfortune hadn’t dampened the headmaster’s mood for more than two weeks.

When they were both seated in armchairs in front of the fire in Severus’ living room, he dared glare at Dumbledore. “Now, what is it? You have bad news, haven’t you?”
He had to disguise his visible agitation, so he had to give Dumbledore a wrong reason. The old man had taught him well.

“I am afraid, yes.” Dumbledore sighed. “Please do try not to overreact. Calm yourself.”

Perfect. That was blanket permission for him to use occlumency.

“Severus ... Lily has vanished from St. Mungo’s.”

“Vanished? What do you mean, vanished?”, Severus said in the flat, dull voice that was the product of using his half-baked occlumency. “How could she just vanish?”

“As I told you when I gave you that emergency portkey, St. Mungo’s is not warded against disapparition.”

“But it is warded against apparition. No one from the outside could ...” He frowned. “Someone on the inside then. I should have known. I could sneak past everyone with that invisibility cloak. Their safeguarding is atrocious! I should have realized right away! Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you have Lily ... and James, fine, removed from there at the earliest opportunity?”

“Calm down Severus. It is easy to point fingers when the child has fallen into the well. No one could have predicted it. Nothing like it happened ever before. They do screen personnel for the Dark Mark, you know?”

And the Dark Mark could be disguised with a spell. The Dark Lord wasn’t completely stupid. “So Death Eaters are the only people who could ever be dangerous?”, he retorted, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Dumbledore sighed. “Of course not. The aurors are looking into it.”

“May I meet with Lucius?” His hands clenched to fists. Dumbledore had made conditions to his testifying in Severus’ favour. Such as being informed whenever he so much as left the castle. “Talk to him. See if he is involved. He always did disapprove of my ... regard for Lily.”

“You may. Arrange a meeting, then tell me when you will depart and when you intend to return.”

Severus nodded. “Anything else?”

“Lily is not the only one who vanished. They also haven’t been able to find the healer who was on shift that night.”

“So I will be looking for two people.”



After Dumbledore had taken his leave, Severus knocked at the bedroom door. “Lizzy?”

The door opened. Lily was in bed, her hair wrapped in a towel. Next to the bed stood the house elf.

“Ah, you gave her a bath. Good. Do you know how to give someone a nutrition potion?”

The house elf nodded eagerly. “Yes. But the she will need proper food sometimes.”

“I shall familiarize myself with the necessary spells. Some kind of mashed food, I assume?”

“Yes. I can prepare it.” The elf stretched out her hand and Severus dropped the nutrition potion into it.

“Do you know what your friend’s favourite hair style is, sir? Lizzy wants ... I want to do her hair the way she likes it.”

Severus considered the matter. “She liked to wear her hair open when I knew her. She would wear a single braid for Potions, so if you want to keep it out of the way, that should be acceptable, too.” He paused. “Will caring for Lily interfere with your other work?”

“I am free to choose whatever work is to be done in Hogwarts.” Lizzy nodded towards Lily. “This is work. There is no problem, sir.”

“Very well.” Cunning. He really liked this elf.


Severus arranged and paid a visit to Lucius, who, as expected, knew of the incident only from reading the Daily Prophet.

“The safety precautions are abysmal”, Narcissa added, with an up-turned nose. “I immediately called our lawyer and had her set up a document for the thankfully very unlikely case Lucius and I both become permanently incapacitated. I have no intention of ever being at the mercy of those imbeciles in St. Mungo’s.”

“Of course”, Severus agreed silkily.

“And of course they will find that our kind are not involved in this crime.” Narcissa sipped at her tea.

Except that ‘their kind’, which with Narcissa meant rich purebloods, had been the ones who had tortured Lily and Potter until they fell into a coma.

“Abducting a defenseless woman”, Lucius agreed. “Any self-respecting pureblood has more honour than that.”

“You think the healer was ... collateral damage?”, Severus inquired cautiously.

“Oh, no, not at all.” Narcissa set her delicate, snake-patterned cup back on the saucer with a decisive clink. “He is quite probably the one who did it. A mudblood, by the sound of his name. Mark my words, they’ll find out he abducted the silly girl to have his way with her.”

Severus breathed deeply and occluded his mind. ‘Silly girl’ was one of the kinder epithets Narcissa used for Lily.

She was well aware that while he would tolerate her use of ‘mudblood’ where anyone else was concerned, Lily was off limits.

“Very likely”, Lucius agreed. “She used to be a pretty thing, that is if you go for redheads.”

Severus stood. “How time flies. I am afraid I have to leave already.”

He graciously accepted Narcissa’s apologies for her husband being ‘rather insensitive’, but still declined the invitation to dinner. “You know how it is these days. The old man watches me like a hawk. I have a curfew.”

And for once, he was glad of it.

The next morning brought news that all but confirmed Narcissa’s theory in the eyes of the public.

There was an almost-witness.

‘“I was so naive”, the young nurse sobs, her eyes filling with tears’ ... typical Skeeter journalism.

Severus took another sip of coffee. “Criminal”, he muttered angrily.

The article detailed how the nurse had found injuries in the ‘genital area’ of witches while washing them, and been told by the healer that it must be sores from the diapers they put on comatose patients, or, in the case of a patient who was still capable of some movement, that the witch must have ‘played with herself’ to cause the injuries.

“I knew they couldn’t have sores”, the nurse had confessed, allegedly under tears but Severus knew how Skeeter liked to embellish. “I was meticulous in keeping them dry and clean. Why did I believe him?”

Severus closed the newspaper, got up and stormed out of the room.

It was, after all, expected that he show some emotion in reaction to those allegiations.


Dumbledore, as expected, followed closely after him. “My dear boy, I hope you don’t intend to do anything rash?”

“Such as killing the bastard who did this to her?” Severus snapped, remembering the incident he had witnessed. “What else would I do, Dumbledore? What else? This disgusting, depraved –“ He let out a low, animal-like growl.

“And that is exactly why I will not allow you to search for him. Be reasonable, Severus. Lily wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life in Azkaban.”

How dare he? “You have no way of knowing what Lily would want! Last thing I heard she would have been quite happy to see me rot in prison!”

“She never said such a thing.”

“She didn’t even want to hear my apology!” And after all those years, it still stung.

“You hurt her terribly, surely you are aware of that? If you had not been her friend, Severus, I doubt she would even remember that instance of name-calling. She certainly wouldn’t think you deserve Azkaban for it.”

How could he know? Lily not talking to him had felt like he had imagined, back then, that Azkaban must feel.
It was different, yes, perhaps Lily had just wanted to continue her life without him in it, she might not have wished to inflict this agony on him – but he could not be sure. Perhaps she knew how he felt and thought he deserved it.
And he did. If not then, then certainly now. “Then perhaps for me selling her to the Dark Lord?”

Dumbledore sighed, defeated. “In any case, you will not be of any use to Lily in prison.”

“What use am I outside prison? My research is going nowhere, and even if it did, would she even want to wake up? Wake up only to learn that –” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, but would have paused anyway, for dramatic effect.

“Severus, please. Surely you do not want to imply that a woman who was raped would be better off dead?”

“Of course not! But – I – I should have protected her.” He had gotten his taste of what sexual assault felt like when Potter had pulled down his pants in front of the whole school, and he certainly had wished he were dead for quite a while after. But he had decided to live on, if only because he knew Potter would have celebrated his death. Spite might not be the most healthy of motivations, but it had served Severus well.

Dumbledore shook his head. “There was nothing you could do. No one could have predicted this.”

“No one? I could have told you. Do you think the student dormitories are segregated by sex because the founders thought segregating by eye colour was too impractical? What did they expect, giving men access to unconscious women? Hell, no one even supervised Lupin’s visits!” Severus had not noted the fact, then, but in retrospect ... the healers did not know Lupin. He could have been a pervert. Or, and that was in fact likely, he could have forgotten to leave in time, before the full moon rose, and massacred everyone in the ward.

“There was no reason to assume Remus would harm them. And there was no reason to assume a healer would harm a patient in his care. Really, Severus, you talk as if you think all men are rapists.”

He felt the legilimency attack, and pushed some memories from student parties to the forefront of his mind. Memories of boys attempting to take advantage of drunken girls. Then, when Dumbledore pried further, he added memories of what Death Eaters did to female muggles and muggleborns. Things he had even reported to Dumbledore, having already been his spy at the time.

“Not all. One out of ten, I would estimate.” A cautious estimation.

“You spent too much time with Death Eaters, Severus. Normal people are not - ”

Normal people? Like James Potter, who thought exposing a fellow student’s genitals to the whole school was a good joke? But no, he would not mention that. He quite liked the illusion that Dumbledore actually cared about him, and didn’t want it smashed into a thousand tiny pieces when the old man inevitably minimized what Potter had done.
“Death Eaters are normal people who flock to the Dark Lord because it suits them for one reason or the other. Pray tell me why a rapist would not apply to a job as healer on the Janus Thickey Ward?” A perfect opportunity to prey on unconscious women.

“Healing is a noble profession.”

“So is teaching, and look at me. I hate children, as you well know. Still, fate has conspired to make me a teacher. And thinking back to my teachers in Defense, I am quite sure some of them were motivated more by money than by the nobility of the profession.” Money, sinister plans, fame, and Severus had some suspicions on the teacher they had had in first year. In retrospect, envying his favourite students had been very foolish.

That shut up Dumbledore for a moment. “It is very hard to find teachers for Defense, Severus”, he said at last. “And, as you surely remember, some of the not so very suitable teachers were female.”

“Well, yes.” Still. “Using the teaching position as a cover to search for the stolen goods she buried in the school grounds when she was a student still isn’t the same as rape. I don’t say a female healer wouldn’t have stolen Lily’s engagement ring.” Not that she still wore it – he supposed it wasn’t safe to let unconscious people wear rings, as they couldn’t say if the ring got too small, or something like that. If it had been stolen, Severus was sure that would have been noticed immediately. Money was important. Human dignity, not so much. “I know perfect safety may not be possible, but if you can easily reduce the risk by ninety percent, why not do that?”

“What happened, happened. I suggest that you let the aurors handle it and meanwhile continue your research. I trust you will come up with a solution.” Dumbledore said condescendingly.

“I don’t. But I will continue it, of course.” It was not like he had anything else to do before the start of next term, and he just had to try.

“Very well, I shall leave you to it.” And with that, Dumbledore finally left his living room.
To be continued...


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