Poppy Pomfrey has been “the” Hogwarts’s matron for decades, long enough to see dozens of anxious first years who needs calming draughts after falling into the lake, gradually turning into young enthusiastic students turning to her after a sprained leg during quidditch or an accident in class, to formidable wizards bravely fighting off evil, but still too stubborn to ask for a bandage or pain reliever. Amongst all patients she has treated, two remain the biggest pain in the neck, but also aches to the heart, the certain “boy-who-lived-to-be-a-danger magnet” Harry Potter, and a certain “I can handle it myself” Severus Snape.

“Very unlucky” would be an understatement when describing Mr. Potter’s circumstances. Despite studying in arguably one of the safest places, trouble always seems to find its way into the young boy’s life from his first day here. From his encounter with Quirrel…and that thing at the back of his head, a healed basilisk fang puncture in the arm, dreaded dementors…

The last few months, however, are even more petrifying. She was there to standby for first aid at the finishing spot, checking and rechecking the foldable medicine rack, waiting and wishing for the two boys’ return.

Only Mr. Potter came back alive, terribly injured and frightened, but alive, she can never get the boy’s distraught wails out of his head. The tragedy vividly imprinted into her mind as Harry Potter clung onto Cedric Diggory’s already cold body, the dead eyes wide open like jaws to a bottomless pit, the usual warmth of the Hufflepuff long lost. Poppy Pomfrey felt like her heart split into two, she remembers Cedric as one of her frequent visitors after either tumbling down with his broom after quidditch or somehow falling from a tree for retrieving a lower class men's toy snitch.

Despite all the scratches and bruises, he came with into the infirmary, he always smiles brightly, thanking her for the trouble, and claiming to not be a big deal whenever she fusses over him. “Please Madam, it's just a small cut.” He once smiled awkwardly as Poppy scolded him for being careless for trying to demonstrate a certain hex to a younger Hufflepuff. As he paused once a while to wince at the applied dittany, he didn’t stop comforting the bawling boy who came with him.

A small smile tugs at her lips to that memory, against the lingering hollowness of a promising student’s death.

This summer changes everything, with Albus and Severus’s evidence of You-know-who’s return, the whole faculty is on high alert. Most of the professors stayed during holidays to enhance the warding around the school grounds, preparing safety measures to ensure nothing out of plan occurs when the students come back when the new school year starts. Herself, however, has only been focusing on replenishing the infirmary’s medic supplies, and maybe occasionally helping with Filius’s arthritis after weekly rounds of warding. Right after the headmaster announced Mr. Potter’s predicament, she has been checking her stock of emergency used potions more often, to make sure everything is well prepared to handle whatever state the boy is rescued back in.

Severus himself has been using up half of the blood replenisher in stock within mere weeks returning to the role of a spy. That would also require more brewing to keep up with his conditions.

As Poppy walks towards the cabinet, she notices a piece of paper sitting silently on top of the neatly stacked medical documents at her desk. She picks up the note and immediately recognizes the slanted, neat cursive.

#
Madam Pomfrey,
I’m certain the headmaster had told you about the Potter boy, we should be able to arrive near the wooden bridge late at night on Saturday this week if things go according to plan, bring as much energy replenisher and Dittany you can get. I brewed the more potent painkillers in advance, please retrieve them in my office, black wooden box, at the very left on the second row of my glass cabinet next to the ingredient jars.
I took some of your nutrition potions and chocolates for use, my apologies for not notifying you sooner, I am in a hurry as I wrote this.
#

Poppy looks at the black splotches of ink on the paper, lined with increasingly spiky handwriting as the note progresses. Her sight swept over to the empty spots in supply shelves, and missing bars of Honeydukes chocolate from the half-opened drawer. She smiles at the thought of the most feared professor rushing out of school with sweets shoved into his inner robes.

#
I’ll brew you my enhanced invigoration draught as payment for the chocolate, and double the taken ones when I’m back, shan’t disrupt your “domain” further, as you would call it.
Wish me luck.
–S.S.--

P.S. Your table is a mess woman, at least put the files on one side, don’t spread it over like butter on toast.
#

Poppy Pomfrey looks back to the stacked papers at the right of her desk.

Cheeky sod.

She folds and puts the note into her pocket, closes the drawer but not before taking a bar of chocolate, and leaves the infirmary, heading down to the dungeons. Things are waiting for her to prepare.

—

Harry coughs himself awake from his restless sleep, it has been probably 3 or 4 days since he saw the professor in the middle of the night. Despite death eaters coming into the room once a while to taunt him and throw him a thin piece of bread, they haven’t hurt him, which is fortunate, perhaps Voldermort ordered them to only feed him to “keep him up alive and we can properly duel when the time comes.” The mad Bellatrix came in once during the period, murmured some kind of incantation as she walked back and forth in the room, not without shooting sadistic looks at him. “I’ll see you in a few days little Potter!”. Harry can tell they are planning something big by how she was skipping out of the room, the ends of her black dress bounced up and down.

He looks at the blurry outline of the ebony door, no one is coming in, not for the past hours.

Harry props himself up against the cold stone wall and grips the silver rod the professor gave him. He didn’t dare do any spells with it to alert people outside, but for some reason the thing in his hand provides him a sense of comfort, like holding a friend’s hand, telling them that things are going to be okay.

As he focuses on the gleams of moonlight reflected on the object, he thinks about the same dream he has been having whenever sleep comes to him. Ron, Hermione, Padfoot, flying over the burrow. A red-haired girl calling his name, in a field of violets. Is it a warped memory or vision? Probably just some sort of fever dreams.

Harry can feel his face radiating heat, but his body is shivering with cold, he raises his shackled hand to touch his forehead.

Yep, definitely a fever dream.

He looks up to the waning moon through the gaps of the iron bars of the small air hole above. Beyond the airhole was a long narrow tunnel leading to the surface, as the curves of the crescent fit perfectly at the dug hole, tiny bits of soil rolled into the cell as wind above brushes across the area. He is being held within a tiny cell in the middle of summer, yet he could feel his feet turning into icicles. The shackles roughly move across his blistered wrist as Harry tries to stretch his back a little, the sound of cracking joints reverberates across the room.

His thoughts keep moving back and forth pondering the meaning of the dreams and facing Voldermort, does Snape get similar dreams when he has the “wand”? If it’s a wand, why does it look different from the ones he has seen, did someone else craft this? Perhaps it’s something exclusive to death eaters. He doesn’t know what this wand’s core is, or if there’s one at all.

So if he doesn’t have the “wand brother” of Voldermort, does it mean he won’t be able to deflect his attacks?

His eyes wander to the door again, the professor is not here.

Harry straightens and bends his knees, his feet feel a little numb, and his calves are starting to cramp for curling up too long. He’s still wearing the old sneakers that were given to him when his cousin couldn’t fit them anymore, his toes getting stiff as he tries to wiggle them in the spacious shoe. The boy chuckled a little, thinking he must be acting silly right now. If he can’t stand to face the enemy, maybe just sit on the ground and shoot spells, perhaps roll away really fast to evade the attacks? He remembers one of those James Bond movies where the man just does a front roll to dodge a bullet.

Harry snickers at the image, he laughs a little harder, until his stomach is starting to hurt, until he can feel his heart pounding in his ears, until he’s curling up and hugging his knees closer, until tears start to fall, sliding to the edge of his jaw.

Am I going to die?

He takes in deep breaths to try to hold back his tears, pushing the knot at his lungs down. His heart doesn’t stop hammering against his ribs, fingers grasping tightly at his bruised arms as they shake, he buries his head into the knees, huddling the “wand” closer. Yet he couldn’t stop crying.

He’s a Gryffindor, the ones from the supposed house of courage and bravery, he has faced that snake-faced bastard more than enough times, even when he’s a baby, and managed to get out unscathed.

Harry twists his shackled hand further, metal rubbing against the blistered wrists.

Focus.

He can feel blood pouring out within the metal, the rusty parts prickling it like needles.

Focus, and you will live, you are the chosen one.

Cold sweat begins to pool at his palms as his wrist radiates pain, but it’s exactly what he needs to FOCUS.

“Potter.”

Harry snaps his head back up, he didn’t notice the man coming into the dungeon, nor has he ever been his life relieved to hear Snape’s voice.

“Muffliato.” The man swished his wand across the air and lifts the pale polished mask as he crouched down in front of the metal bars. He reaches into the inner pockets of his cloak and pulls out glass vials, like a few days ago. He brings two glass vials over, gesturing Harry to drink. His hands aren’t shaking this time. Harry downs the potion immediately, grimacing at the taste of burnt celery mud and the odd gritty texture in his tongue. He hands it back to the professor, who is occasionally glancing at the door.

“Are you hurt anywhere?.” Snape asks, with a twinge of concern Harry is not familiar with.

“They didn’t do anything,” Harry whispers cautiously, “...Sir.”.

Snape snorts at the last word, “My, the famous Harry Potter can actually be respectful towards teachers.” He looks behind for a moment as he takes the vials “It is certainly true that people change for the better when death comes knocking.”

Harry isn’t that relieved anymore.

Suddenly, a packet of something is tossed onto his lap, Harry flinches in surprise and is even more surprised when he sees the familiar Honeydukes package under the dim Moonlight.

“Eat as much as you can, you’d need the energy.” Snape stands up and scans his wand across the space. “You’re getting out tonight.”

Harry choked on the piece of milk chocolate at the abrupt announcement.

Snape narrowed his eyes and shakes his head exasperatedly, “Trust me, Mr. Potter, I didn’t volunteer, your dogfather did.”

“Don’t call him that.” Harry looks up at the man, irritated “it’s…not nice.” he mentally smacks himself in the head at the weak retort.

“And pray tell, since when was there an occasion where I am ‘nice’, Potter?” Snape drawls nonchalantly, scanning the walls.

Yeah, since never.

The light at the tip of the man’s wand turned light blue when it moves across the bars at Harry’s cell, the boy looks at his eyes widen in the mild alert.

“Anyone come in to perform warding spells?”

“Erm…” Harry hesitated, perhaps it has something to do with that madwoman? “Bellatrix Lestrange came in and maybe spelled something into the room?”

“What did she say?”

“... It ended with something like, ‘er ulfens skierder’...”

Harry watches as Snape’s face turns from confusion to realization, brows knitting tighter together, hand drags down his face, and looks away as if he faced a dead end in a maze.

“ The Gleipnir ward, why didn’t I consider that.” he said in a rather soft voice, but Harry is sure he can hear the professor’s panic, that the escape plan is not going to work. He thinks the chocolate bar might have expired, it now tastes like ash.

“So…what now? Sir?” Harry says tentatively.

“I’m thinking Potter.” Snape snaps, pacing back and forth with his hand still covering his mouth. “The ward is designed to entrap a specific subject within, right now even if you simply walk out of the cell, you would apparate back behind these bars, the more you attempt, the more the ward’s perimeter shrinks, until you are forced to stay at one spot to not splinch yourself.”

Snape takes out a small silver necklace “The bird won’t do us any good either.”

Harry recognizes the phoenix at the glowing center, “But Dumbledore told me Fawkes can go through any war—”

“Headmaster Dumbledore,” Snape glared at the sitting boy in front of him, “is correct, however, the ward here does not apply. The Gleipnir ward requires the warder’s pure malicious intent, it’s made of all things impossible, and it’s extreme dark magic. The ward can only be lowered by the caster or the countering key, it can hardly be destroyed. If we apparate with Fawkes when you are in the perimeter, we would be ensnared just the same, either I am fortunate enough to kill off quickly by a possible alert system, or worse, splinching myself every move while I’m in your company. This bird would burn off as usual, but he would simply stay as a pile of ash.”

At some point, Harry must have dozed off because he finds himself trying to blink his eyes open as Snape puts his cold hand onto his burning chin.

“Stay awake, Potter, you’re having a fever.” Snape turns over and rips off the corner of his cloak, folds, and places it on the boy’s forehead after soaking it with a silent aguamenti. Harry sighs at the coolness of the cloth and hears the man mutter “Idiot boy” as he checks his cuffed wrist.

Snape is, concerned? Harry has an odd thought that the professor is fussing over him like madam Pomfrey or Mrs. Weasley over the twins when they got in trouble, yet he can’t help but grin a little at the comparison.

Suddenly, the darkness of the room is interrupted by a line of light, Snape snaps up and points his wand at the door, Harry jolts himself awake, retreating to the very corner of the cell. They both hold their breath as another figure walks in.

“Severus.” Lucius Malfoy points the snake-headed wand at his peer, “The Dark Lord requires your presence at the preparations, but you’re busy consorting with the enemy, I see.” He speaks with feigned shock.

“Don’t be daft Lucius,” Harry’s eyes dart back to the professor, “You’ve suspected it long enough to have accurate conclusions.”

“If I kill you here, I shall be rewarded heavily for cleansing the impure off our lord’s feet.” The Malfoy says in a sickeningly sweet voice, but Harry didn’t miss the slight tremble in it.

Before the blonde can take a step forward, icicles rose from the floor, trapping and freezing his body, his wand drops to the ground as the frost moves to the tip of his fingers. He stares straight at the spy as his wand is kicked to the dark stone corner.

“My apologies.” Snape steps and points his wand closer to the half-frozen man. “But I doubt the Dark Lord would believe the one cowering behind front lines ever since his return. Perhaps it is finally time to admit that you find him too psychotic to follow, or are you simply too cowardly to serve?”

“I am no coward!” Malfoy grits out, “He shall change the society for the better, our world will be greater with the mudbloods exterminated, next generations shall live is prosper when the Lord replaces that swine of a minister! I would sacrifice anything for the Lord’s cause!”

“Even your own son?” Snape asks in a glacial voice, Harry could feel the room’s temperature dropping even further. “Your own blood that you’ve spoiled rotten? That you and Narcissa loved like a bright pearl in your palms.”

So Snape does know Malfoy is spoiled.

“ALL I DID WAS FOR DRACO!” Malfoy yells, he thought of the blood in his hands, the same hands he cradled his son when he was an infant, the same that squeezed Draco’s shoulder when he sent him each year at King’s Cross, the same when he hugged his son for each achievement with unspeakable pride. “How can you possibly understand, the work and pain I go through just to keep my family happy, to keep them safe!”

“AS LONG AS YOU ARE UNDER HIM LIKE A BRANDED CATTLE, DON’T EVEN DREAM OF THEM BEING SAFE!” Snape boomed, he pauses for a moment to breath out. “You know the Dark Lord has started to take notice of him, it won’t be long for him to ask for your son’s initiation, to go out and kill. You think the Dark Lord would hesitate to leave him be if he fails?”

The older man opens his mouth, head slowly hanging, “The Dark Lord… wouldn’t do that to him.” his voice wavers as tries to reject something treacherous deep down, and the image of a heartless green light hits Draco.

“Wake up. Lucius.” The spy says, hand grasping at his friend’s shoulder as the ice slowly melts away. “Do I need to deduce how long he held you under his spell of entertainment before you came in?”.

From the cell corner, Harry can hear the soft shuddering breath from the Malfoy patriarch, and it makes him pity the man a bit. He thinks about how Draco brags about “my father” in every encounters they have, with pride and fondness. The whole exchange between his professor and his nemesis’ father is giving him some mixed feelings, it makes death eaters more…human. He recalls the two lackeys that follow Malfoy like bodyguards, did their parents join Voldermort too? Harry wonders if his parents ever did something really wrong just to keep someone they cared for safe, if not him.

“What choice do I have,” Lucius clutches his fist as the frost dissipates “other than keep going.” Severus moves forward to steady his friend, waving the wand to melt off the ice “Don’t tell me you want us to run to Dumbledore and beg on our knees?”

“Listen to me, go to him, then at least Draco will be safe, and you will have a choice if you’re fortunate enough.” The professor says.

Lucius Malfoy looks at his friend’s eyes, it’s filled with determination, a rushing wave different from the normal black pool of void, the very same that proved eager to serve decades ago, have returned to convince him the opposite.

How ironic.

The brief silence is broken by the sharp pain at the men’s front arm, almost toppling over the pain, Malfoy hisses “He’s demanding you.”

“What of you?”

Lucius scoffs, “Who are you, a Hufflepuff? Worry yourself.” he winces as he sees the veins from the mark crawls across the rest of his arm, “The Lord deemed less of use for the grand ritual, and I am to return to the comfort of my own bed after bringing his message.” while the whole situation sounds rather pleasant, Harry assumes it’s a top tier humiliation within the death eaters from the man’s tone.

Snape stops for a moment, “ What’s his final decision on destination?”.

“The other circle, spruce forest to the east of the entire village.”

“But outside the wards?” Snape says, shocked, they might have a chance after all.

“The Dark Lord put the whole area under fidelius, and find any others unnecessary.”

“The warding key?” Snape takes a brief glance at Harry, though the boy can tell his professor is now optimistic.

“Bella has it”

Snape looks to the side while still clutching his arm, mind doing quick calculations to form a new plan.

“Go home and take Draco and Narcissa with you, apparate to Hogwarts and find the Headmaster.” the spy squeezed his arm even tighter, slamming down the growing pain.

“And you?” Before Lucius can finish though, something is hurled into his chest, a silver plate necklace with a glowing insignia.

His friend walks past him briskly, not before spewing “Who’s the Hufflepuff now” and explodes out of the room, black cloak billowing behind like wings of a raven.

Lucius meets eyes with Harry for one moment, the boy’s curled figure even more vulnerable under the curtains of pale moonlight. “Damned Gryffindors” he snarls, then apparates away with a loud crack.

Harry wasn’t sure if Malfoy senior is referring to him.

—

Poppy Pomfrey floos back to the headmaster’s office, requests potions, bandages in tow, people of the order are arguing among themselves, and Sirius is pointing and yelling at someone.

“Ah Poppy, I’m afraid the stand-by is no longer necessary.” Albus says calmly as he leads her to the center of the room. Then she sees it, the Malfoys.

“Albus what–” Poppy is horrified by the scene, with Sirius pointing his wand at Lucius Malfoy on the ground, as Draco raises his. Narcissa slowly stands up by his husband’s side, yet no Severus or Harry in sight.

“WHERE IS HARRY WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM!” Sirius Barks, his eyes filled with unleashed fury, shoulders raised. The rest of the order too, have their wands pointed at the three blondes, not without Draco shouting “Shut it, you blood traitor!”.

The Malfoy patriarch hesitantly sits up straighter and looks to Albus, “I doubt there’s time to allow me to explain.” he says in a diplomatic voice, but trembling, he holds up the silver necklace that came with him “Please Headmaster Dumbledore, you need to lower the wards.”