The brass key fell to the ground unnoticed as Snape lay the dying teenager on the dust-covered floor. With a wave of his wand, he lit the oil lamps that lined the walls. Beyond noticing that they were in the dining room, he didn’t spare a glance for his surroundings. Potter was covered in blood and vomit and every other kind of human excretion. His face and hands were swollen, burned, and chalky. His chest heaved oddly and his limbs twitched. Potter was choking on his own blood; drowning in his own secretions. Snape’s hands trembled. He had always prided himself on his ability to remain calm and prioritize under pressure, but even he didn’t know where to begin with Potter’s extensive list of injuries. He needed his potions and he needed assistance. In the next instant, the boy’s body shuddered and went limp. “Lily, help me,” he implored.

Clear the airways. Stop the bleeding. Stabilize the patient. The commands echoed in his mind and Snape obeyed them without question. Whether they were from years of training alongside Madam Pomfrey or from beyond the grave, he didn’t know or care. He flicked his wand to remove the teenager’s clothing, quickly cataloging the damage that lay before him. Then, with a series of wand strokes and incantations, he cleared Potter’s lungs of fluid, mended the fractured ribs to stabilize the chest cavity, and sealed the puncture in Potter’s left lung. As the boy’s lungs inflated properly, his labored breathing eased a little.

Next, Snape turned his attention to the alarming amounts of blood seeping from Potter’s wounds. The X that Bellatrix had carved into him was by far the worst. It took Snape nearly ten minutes of incanting and wand work to mend the deep gashes. With no time to waste on perfection, he knew the boy would be terribly scarred, but that was the least of his worries at the moment. Potter’s blood pressure was dangerously low from loss of blood and his body temperature was dropping. Snape did a quick diagnostic scan and grimaced at the results. On top of everything else, the boy was in shock.

“I’m fighting a losing battle,” Snape hissed to himself as he repositioned the boy on his side. Leaning towards him, Snape growled: “Potter, listen to me. I am going back to Hogwarts to get some supplies. I will return in ten minutes time—ten minutes. Use that damnable Gryffindor stubbornness of yours and stay alive. I will not have you dying in my absence. Do you hear me?”

Snape wanted to shake the boy for good measure but refrained. Instead, he cast a warming charm on him, grabbed the invisibility cloak he’d found stuffed in Potter’s back pocket, and apparated beneath it to the back gates of Hogwarts.

Snape landed easily on his feet on the cold, hard ground and stood perfectly still. He had feared that the Dark Lord, realizing his duplicity, might have sent Death Eaters to stake out Hogwarts in case of his return. There were none, at least not at these gates. With a speed that belied his age, Snape ran to the back entrance of the castle, the one nearest the dungeons, and let himself in. It had to be sometime after midnight, and he wondered if Dumbledore knew that Draco Malfoy had managed to kidnap Potter from right under the Headmaster’s nose. With as much curfew-breaking and sneaking around as those two did, he wasn’t sure anyone would have noticed yet.

Inside his quarters, he grabbed his emergency potions kit and all of the bottles of blood replenishing, pain relieving, and pepper-up potion that he had on hand. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he called out: “Dobby!”

With a loud crack, an oddly dressed house elf appeared. “Professor Snape called Dobby, sir,” the elf squeaked, a stack of knit hats of every color perched precariously atop his head.

“Dobby,” Snape said, watching the elf’s every move, “you are a free elf, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you are loyal to Albus Dumbledore? And this school?”

“Yes, sir,” Dobby replied, bouncing eagerly on the balls of his small feet.

“And you know Harry Potter?”

“Oh yes,” Dobby replied, “Harry Potter is a great and kind Wizard, sir. Harry Potter…”

Snape waved his hand in an impatient gesture. “Dobby,” Snape interrupted, “if you could only be loyal to one Wizard and you had to choose between Professor Dumbledore and Harry Potter, who would it be?”

Dobby raised his great orb like eyes to Snape and said, very clearly, “Headmaster Dumbledore is a great Wizard, sir, it is true. But Harry Potter set me free. If it is one allegiance I must choose, then I choose Harry Potter, sir.”

Snape squatted down so that he was eye to eye with the elf. “If Potter’s life depended on it, would you disobey a direct order from Dumbledore?”

Dobby’s eyes grew wider if that were possible. Gravely he answered, “Yes, Professor Snape. Dobby would do anything for Harry Potter, sir.”

Snape cleared his throat. “Harry Potter is lying near death as we speak. I don’t know if I can save him. But I do know that I need your help if I am to try. Do I have your word that you will be loyal to Harry Potter beyond all else?”

Dobby stood very still. Snape had never seen the elf look so serious or determined. “Dobby pledges his eternal allegiance to Harry Potter, sir. You has Dobby’s word, sir.”

“I may need you to do things that are questionable at best, Dobby. I’ll likely need you to lie to the Headmaster to stay in the good graces of this Castle, and to steal potions and other supplies to keep Potter alive. Can you do that?”

“Dobby will do whatever is necessary to save Harry Potter, sir.”

Snape nodded his approval and stood. Ten seconds later, Dobby apparated Snape and himself directly from Snape’s quarters to the outskirts of Aberdeen. Snape had only a second to marvel at the often overlooked wonders of elf magic before he apparated himself and Dobby inside the Fidelius charmed cottage on the outskirts of Aberdeen.

The second they landed, Dobby crooned loudly. “Oh, Harry Potter, sir. What has they done to you? What has they done to Harry Potter?”

Potter lay in a huddled mass of burnt and bruised flesh, his breathing little more than a faint rasping echo. Blood had seeped into the wooden floorboards all around him, obliterating the dust that had been there before.

Dobby moaned and wrapped his arms around himself, swaying alarmingly.

“Pull yourself together,” Snape snapped. “We have very little time.”

Dobby straightened and looked at Snape, true fear in his eyes.

“Take these,” Snape said, thrusting the emergency potions kit at Dobby as well as the other satchel of potions he’d hurriedly packed. “Pay close attention and do exactly as I say.”

“Yes sir,” Dobby whispered.

Snape knelt beside Potter and directed Dobby to administer a glucose solution, blood replenishing potion, and an antimicrobial concoction while Snape set about cleaning and healing the open wounds. Once he had stopped the bleeding, Snape focused on the various broken bones that needed to be treated. Potter’s left ankle, wrist, and clavicle were easily mended. His right femur, however, was a bit trickier as splintered bone shards had severed an artery in the leg, leaving a large hematoma in its wake. More disturbing, though, were the multiple cracked vertebrae that defined Potter’s spine. Snape could only wonder at how Potter had survived the excruciating torture. Taking a deep breath, Snape glanced up to see the same horrified realization reflected in Dobby’s orb-like eyes.

Gritting his teeth, Snape bent to the task at hand, thankful for Dobby’s silence. Dobby, Snape reflected, was an able assistant, eager to help yet not chatty, and both accurate and observant—two attributes Snape valued greatly. Snape turned his attention to the badly charred flesh on Potter’s hands, arms, face, and neck. The skin was a mushy puddle of goo, oozing clear fluid. Snape uttered several charms to irrigate, debride, and medicate the wounds. Then he put a bubble charm on the affected areas to keep the newly healed surfaces from becoming exposed to anything that might cause infection.

Fingers crossed, Snape ran another diagnostic scan. Potter’s liver was enlarged, his pancreas and lungs badly bruised. His kidneys were failing, and there was moderate to heavy internal bleeding as well as fluid retention. On the other hand, his broken bones had mended successfully and his lungs and heart were still operating, even if not to the extent that Snape would have hoped. Signaling for Dobby to administer a few more potions, Snape called upon every shred of knowledge he’d ever learned about the healing arts.

Twenty minutes later, when Snape had done everything he could, he leaned back on his haunches to survey the outcome. Potter still looked swollen, bruised, and broken. In fact, to an outsider, he’d be unrecognizable. His skin was waxen, his charred lips tinged with blue. His labored breathing continued to slow, as did his heart rate and blood pressure. His body temperature refused to stabilize. His limbs twitched and his feet and hands had begun to curl in on themselves.

Snape swore and turned away. After a few moments, he turned his gaze to the mangled body before him and, without looking up, said quietly, “Thank you, Dobby, for your assistance. I do not believe I will be needing your services any longer.”

Snape conjured a blanket and covered Potter with it. Shaking his head, he whispered, “I’m sorry, Lily. I did all I could.”

Snape startled when he felt a warm hand on his shoulder.

“Harry Potter saved my life, sir. Dobby will not let Harry Potter die.”

Snape watched as the elf pulled back the blanket and held his small hands, palms down, about two inches above Harry’s scarred chest. Speaking in a language that Snape had never heard before, the elf moved his knobby hands in a figure-eight motion, completely entranced in the rare ritual he was performing. Snape imagined few Wizards were ever gifted with the sight of an elf performing this kind of magic. Snape had only ever heard rumors that such a thing even existing.

As the elf continued, a white light emanated from his palms. At one point, Potter’s body shuddered and trembled, but Dobby proceeded as if nothing had happened. A few minutes later, Dobby paused and looked up at Snape.

“I have stopped the internal bleeding and stabilized his organs, sir. But only a Wizard can truly save him.”

Snape quirked an eyebrow in question.

“Harry Potter has suffered irreversible trauma to his magical core,” Dobby continued. “Only a Wizard can resurrect and rebuild the magical life force of another Wizard.”

Snape stilled as the implications of what Dobby was proposing raced through his mind. He had done a lot for the ungrateful son of James Potter. Was he truly willing to go this far? Sighing, he clenched his jaw with decision. He’d chosen his course when he’d apparated them both here. Swallowing against his instincts of self-preservation, Snape nodded once.

Moments later, Dobby positioned Snape opposite him over Potter’s body and directed him to place his left hand on the boy’s forehead and his right hand low down on the boy’s abdomen. Then the elf began the odd chanting combined with figure-eight hand movements, first over Potter, and then over Severus’s hands. Fascinated, Snape stared as he both watched and felt his life force drain into the boy. The white light that had once came only from Dobby’s hands now came from his own hands as well. Again the boy convulsed, but this time when the boy stopped trembling, Snape saw a pink flush creep slowly outward from the boy’s navel. The color spread, seeping across every plane of the boy’s body in a steadily growing radius. Snape inhaled sharply in surprise as the X that Bellatrix had carved into the boy’s flesh began to lighten, and then vanish completely. The pink tinge continued to spread, and Snape gazed in awe as the burned flesh regrew—pink and supple and healthy—with no trace of scarring. He glanced up at Dobby only to find the elf still consumed by the ancient elf magic, performing a healing ritual that any Wizard would give his or her wand to be able to perform.

Snape swayed slightly as a feeling of light-headedness came over him. He forced himself to stay present, to give Potter what he needed to survive. Unconsciously, he flexed his fingers against the boy’s skin, which had warmed with the suffusing color, and felt almost hot against his sweaty palms. Now a rosy pink, Snape could clearly see a pulse beating strong in the boy’s neck. As he watched, Potter’s eyelids fluttered, though they did not open.

As Dobby’s movements slowed, Snape was finding it harder and harder to stay upright. Exhaustion swamped every cell of his body and his limbs felt unbearably heavy. “Dobby,” Snape murmured, holding onto to consciousness as a drowning man holds onto a raft, “when you are finished, can you go to Hogwarts and get Mr. Potter and myself some clothes, food, books, and anything else you think we might need?”

At Dobby’s acquiescence, Snape swayed alarmingly, halted from falling over only by a thought that threatened to undermine their combined efforts to keep Potter alive. “Say nothing to anyone,” Snape uttered, “especially Dumbledore.”

At that, Snape collapsed in a heap beside Potter. Thoughts of sleeping on a comfortable mattress evaporated as his trembling limbs melted into the hard, blood-stained floor. Snape was covered in sweat and blood and thought he likely smelled as bad as Potter, whose breathing had finally evened out.

As Snape lay there, contemplating all that had happened that evening, a golden glint caught his eye. It took all of his concentration and effort to reach out and grasp the brass key that had saved both of their souls this evening—Lily’s key—their port key to safety and the house key to this cottage. He scanned the room briefly; he’d been here only once before, 20 years earlier, when he had been made secret-keeper to this cottage. Lily had purchased it using her grandmother’s name before she’d married James Potter. Just in case she ever needed a safe place, she had said. If only she had used it when Voldemort was hunting her. Snape sighed and closed his eyes. Thoughts and images swirled in his head, as if his mind were a Pensieve and someone was stirring the contents. He frowned with consternation as he fought in vain to catch them—all but one.

Yawning, he murmured: “Tonight I lay our souls at your feet, and pray someday again we’ll meet, but if tonight it’s not meant to be, I pray you’ll keep watch over your son and me.”