Snape sat downstairs in his chair by the fire, nursing a stiff drink and wondering what the hell had happened to his life. Not only did he currently have the child of his nemesis sleeping upstairs in his old bedroom, but he was going out of his way to make sure said child was well-taken care of after the horrendous events he had suffered that day.

Potter had fallen asleep quickly – he'd checked on him shortly after he'd taken the potion. He supposed that was to be expected for the boy, even as nervous as he'd been being in Snape's presence that evening. After all, there was only so much emotion that one could go experience before they passed out as, Potter had done.

He examined his blistered palm, better now after using the ointment, and wondered what in Merlin's name had possessed him to do what he'd done. He'd mastered his emotions years ago, when he'd first turned spy for Dumbledore and the old man had taught him Occlumency, the better to spy on the Dark Lord. He hadn't cut or wounded his body since he'd been a young man. Dumbledore had been the one to teach him the calm control that he so prided himself on now. Yet another thing to be grateful to the old coot for…

Snape knew the headmaster would be paying him a visit sometime that night. In the Patronus message he'd dispatched to Nymphadora, he'd been sure to include instructions to inform the headmaster of the turn of events immediately. The fact that Dumbledore hadn't come as of yet had Snape feeling somewhat uneasy; the Aurors must be having a difficult time modifying the memories of those evil little bastards. Or the Ministry was trying to insert itself where it didn't belong in Potter's life, yet again…

Snape say quietly, studying his drink when a sudden terrified scream rent the air. Snape dropped the drink and was on his feet, taking the stairs three at a time, his wand at the ready as he burst into his old bedroom. He spun in the darkness, searching for an intruder, perhaps another Death Eater… anything that could have caused Potter to scream so fearfully. But there was nothing.

Potter's body arched as he shrieked yet again, long, drawn out, and petrified.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

The boy was having a nightmare. But how…? Snape thought in confusion. The boy took Dreamless Sleep… I watched him take it.

"Sirius!" Potter screamed, "Don't leave me! Sirius!"

He was dreaming of his Godfather. The stupid mutt had selfishly gone off and gotten himself killed at the Ministry, leaving the boy alone with his abominable relatives. No thanks to your taunting, that small voice inside him whispered. For once Snape found the guilt strong enough to withstand his ability to brush it aside.

"Please, no! Uncle Vernon, PLEASE! I'll be good, I swear! DON'T DO THIS!"

The fear that Potter was so obviously experiencing propelled Snape to the edge of the bed. He'd figure out the reason for the unbidden nightmare later. Reaching down to shake the boy awake, he grabbed Potter's shoulder. But the moment Snape's fingers connected with the boy, Potter erupted.

"NO! Please Uncle Vernon! Get him off me! PLEASE DON'T LET DUDLEY TOUCH ME! PLEASE!"

Snape grasped his shoulders with both hands now, trying desperately to wake him. "Potter!" But the boy grabbed Snape's forearms and bucked, rolling them both to the floor. Potter was on top of him, scratching at Snape's face, desperate to get away from his dream attacker. Grasping the boy's shoulders again, he flung Potter to the side and rolled on top of him, placing his substantial weight on top of the boy's body in order to calm his struggles.

"NO! GET OFF ME!" Harry cried, hot tears streaming down his face as his legs unexpectedly freed themselves and landed one perfect kick to Snape's ribs.

Snape heard a loud crack and cried out as a sudden pain tore through his side. The boy had cracked a rib, maybe even broken it. But Snape threw his weight on top of the struggling young man again, cringing at the agony in his side.

"Harry!" he gasped painfully, "Harry, it's alright. It's me! It's Professor Snape!"

.:HP::SS:HP::SS:.

A voice suddenly penetrated the haze of Harry's nightmare. Harry… it whispered from the dark mists at the edge of his mind. It's alright, Harry. Odd… Uncle Vernon and Dudley never called him by his first name, usually preferring to refer to him as "freak" or "creep".

He realized suddenly that his uncle and cousin were gone, the one no longer using his meaty fists to inflict pain while the other tried to stop his squirming and force himself upon Harry. Harry was alone, utterly and completely alone. Startled and scared at the sudden turn of events, he began to stumble around in the emptiness. Tears streamed down his face as he called out in the dark, unsure of what – or who – he was searching for.

Harry… he heard the whisper again. I'm here, Harry…

With a choking sob, he suddenly awoke to find Snape on top of him. Strangely, Harry was not afraid of the man. Instead he began to tremble so hard that his teeth chattered. He couldn't stop the tears from falling, trickling into his ears and wetting the small hairs at his temple since he was laying on his back. The deep, shuttering gasps echoed throughout the dark room.

"Harry?" Snape murmured, but the sound of his name did nothing to calm him. Grunting and holding his side, Snape slowly maneuvered off of him and pulled them both upright, holding Harry's shoulder with his free hand as he tried to peer into Harry's face. Harry hurled himself into his professor's chest, throwing his arms around the man. Snape caught him with a grunt and a slight gasp, but didn't hesitate to wrap his free hand around Harry's back, making soothing noises as he held Harry in his arms.

Harry was unsure how long they stayed like that. He had never experienced anything like it before, at least not anything that he could remember since his parents died. For the first time that he could ever remember, Harry actually felt cared about and safe. The thought made his cheeks burn with embarrassment.

Pulling away and wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his pajamas, Harry didn't know where to look. He scooted back until his back hit the edge of the bed. "I'm… I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean… I don't know what happened."

Snape hadn't moved, and Harry noticed for the first time that he had one arm wrapped across his waist, holding his side. His breathing seemed a little shallow.

"Do you often have nightmares?" he asked Harry after a long moment.

"Yes, sir. But nothing like that." Harry chanced a glance at the man, but looked quickly away. "I learned a long time ago to keep quiet at night. The Dursley's never liked to be woken up when I had bad dreams…"

Snape was quiet for a moment, and Harry listened to the man's shallow, raspy breaths as he watched his own fingers twisting nervously in his lap. Snape broke the silence.

"It's not your fault. You had a bad reaction to the Dreamless Sleep. For some reason it enhanced the nightmare's effects instead of suppressing them."

"Oh," Harry murmured, still not meeting his professor's eyes.

"Potter. Look at me." He waited until Harry complied before quietly saying, "It's not your fault. You did nothing wrong." He stared at Harry for a long moment, his eyes glinting in the darkness. Harry felt strangely exposed, but not threateningly so. "Do you think you can go back to sleep?" the professor suddenly asked.

"I don't think so, sir…" Harry admitted.

A strange look crossed Snape's face, but after a moment he grudgingly said, "Why don't you come with me, then. I could… use your help."

Harry got to his feet, but was confused when Snape had a hard time doing the same. Without taking his arm off his side, the professor tried to rise, but collapsed onto the floor again with a groan.

"Professor!" Harry dropped to the man's side and gingerly draped Snape's free arm about his own shoulders. He stood slowly, bringing the taller man up with him. "What happened, sir?" he asked as Snape leaned heavily on Harry for support as they made their way out of the room. Snape motioned for him to go downstairs.

"Broken rib," Snape grunted in obvious pain as they took the stairs one at a time. "Cracked, at the very least."

"A broken…?" Suddenly it dawned on Harry, and he stopped on one of the stairs, horrified. "Bloody hell, did I do this to you?! Sir, I'm-!"

"Don't you dare apologize, Potter," Snape growled. "I'm well aware it was an accident." Harry kept moving, biting his tongue the entire way to keep from repeating how sorry he was.

They reached the entrance hall at the base of the stairs, and Snape motioned to a closed door opposite the library across the hall. "My study," Snape murmured. Opening the door and feeling for the light switch on the wall, Harry squinted in the sudden bright light. The study was almost exactly the same as the library – floor to ceiling bookshelves along three of the walls. On the last wall, sitting next to the door, was a sofa much like the ones across the hall. There was a painting of a grand manor house hung above it. A large, solid desk sat in the middle of the room, with parchments and quills scattered across its surface.

"The desk," Snape ground out, and Harry turned them around so that the professor could perch himself against the edge. When the man was half standing, half slouching against the large desk, he said, "Now comes the hard part. I need your help to get my shirt off."

"Uhhhhh…"

"I'm not pleased either, Potter. If I'd known this morning that I was going to be sitting here half-naked, I would have called for the company of a beautiful, full-breasted woman, not some mortified teenage boy. But we'll need to wrap my rib. So just do it."

Harry was in such a rush to get the unwelcome task over with, he accidentally yanked Snape's arm in a painful way as he was unbuttoning his black overcoat. "Easy, boy!" Snape ground out.

"Sorry, sir," Harry muttered guiltily, then went back to work slowlyandcarefullyunbuttoning the rest. "You know, this would be a lot easier if you wore stuff that had zippers."

Harry couldn't tell if he caused Snape to be in pain, or if the man was actually showing his human side again, for the professor let out a breath that sounded peculiarly like a chuckle. However, the man was moaning in pain a moment later as he stretched out his arms to remove his overcoat.

"Sorry…"

"Now… the shirt," Snape rasped, unbuttoning the wrists of the white button-down while he held his hands limply in his lap. He groaned again a moment later as Harry helped him take first one arm, then the other out of the shirt.

Harry was shocked to see purplish scars crisscrossing his professor's forearms, biceps, and chest, but said nothing. He was also surprised to see that the professor was kind of… well… strong. Harry had never thought about it before since the man was usually covered head to foot. But he supposed after years of grinding things into a find dust with a mortar and pestle (which he knew from experience could be hard) would eventually give one very strong arms.

After the movement of removing the overcoat and shirt, Snape was out of breath and obviously in tremendous pain. "Go down… to… potions lab. The door… in the kitchen. Looks… like a basement. Incantation… 'Ostendete'." Harry rushed to comply as he heard the agony in the man's voice, hurrying towards the door and almost forgetting the most important information in his rush to help.

"Sir," he asked hastily as he turned back to face his professor. "What potions should I get?"

"Skele-Grow," Snape hissed. "Pain potion. Bandage."

Harry sprinted to the kitchen, spotting a wooden door at the rear of the room. Flinging it open, he ran down the concrete stairs, not surprised when he saw an ordinary, dank-looking muggle basement. "Ostendete!"

The floors and the walls shifted and changed before his very eyes, and he would have found it quite amazing had he not been in such a hurry. "C'mon… C'mon!" he muttered. White marble stone slabs replicated and unfolded themselves along the floor and up the walls, and shelves full of ingredients and potions rose from beneath the floor to settle against three of the walls. Cauldrons of all sizes sat on a long bench along the one remaining wall, some even bubbling softly with potions. Many candelabras dropped into place from the ceiling, swinging gently into place and casting the room in a warm, well-lit glow. The final object to come through the floor – a large work desk in a blocky U-shape – finally settled in place in the middle of the large space.

Harry hurried over to the shelves containing the bottled potions, all glowing from within, casting different shades and shimmering colors onto the wall. He found the Skele-Grow bottle quickly, remembering the black bone-covered bottle from his second year, when Lockheart had removed all the bones in his arm. He also remembered the grass-green pain potion well enough, having taken it multiple times during his school career while under the care of Madam Pomfrey.

The bandages were a little more difficult to find, hidden in a basket in the back of the large supply shelves. There was a bit of a mess when Harry was done, but he didn't care at the moment. He'd come back down later and clean up. Racing back up the stairs, Harry skidded into the study, out of breath.

"Relax Potter," the professor murmured, "I'm not dying."

Harry just glared at the man before asking, "What now?"

"Get that glass next to the decanter on the shelf," Snape muttered. "Now pour about an ounce. More… Not that much! Honestly boy, have I taught you nothing in the past five years?" the man groused. Harry almost smiled as he poured a bit back into the bottle. The professor must not be as badly off as Harry thought if he was strong enough to harass him.

Snape gingerly held out his hand for the smoking glass of Skele-Grow, wincing slightly. "Have that pain potion ready. This bloody stuff tastes like piss," he grumbled with a disgusted look on his face.

"I know," Harry chuckled quietly. "I remember." He handed the vial of pain potion over to Snape, who used it as a chaser after gently tossing back the Skele-Grow.

As Harry helped bind his professor's rib cage, Snape glanced over his shoulder at him and muttered, "You're quite good at wrapping ribs, Potter. Have you done this before?"

Harry glanced at Snape, but couldn't hold his gaze. He continued to wrap as he admitted, "Uncle Vernon and Dudley have gotten a little… overenthusiastic… in the past. It was always someone from school that said something – my teachers, the school nurse." Harry shrugged, "The Dursleys kind of had to take me to the ER after that, or the authorities would have been called. So yeah… I know a little about wrapping ribs. Not too tight, so that you don't get a lung infection. But tight enough to hold it steady when you move."

He offered Snape a smile, to prove that he was capable of remembering some things and wasn't a complete dunderhead. But as Snape continued to watch him with a cold angry look on his face, Harry immediately assumed that he had done something to irritate the man. "I don't mean to complain, sir!" He quickly tried to explain. "I just thought-"

"Potter. Stop." Harry immediately stopped taping the bandages, staring worriedly at his professor. "You didn't do anything wrong. Stop apologizing." Harry flushed into the uncomfortable silence, still staring at his professor.

.:HP::SS:HP::SS:.

Snape took another deep breath, obviously not doing a decent job of hiding his anger from the boy. The more he heard about Potter's relatives, the more he pitied the fact that he was no longer a true Death Eater that could storm their house and show them the exact definition of evil…

Potter had been abused growing up, and was obviously uncomfortable with the thought that not everything was his fault. A notion definitely aided along by myself before today, Snape thought, swallowing back a pang of guilt. The boy was turning out to be very different than the spoiled, pampered brat he'd always assumed he was since meeting him five years ago.

He broke eye contact in order to tentatively stretch his arms and test the makeshift wrapping. "I'll have to take it slow over the next few days. But this process would have been a lot harder without you, Potter. Thank you."

The boy blushed an even deeper shade of crimson as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh, yeah… Sure. You wouldn't have even needed to do it if it wasn't for me, but…"

Snape's eyes narrowed as he carefully slipped his arms through the sleeves of his button down, leaving it open so as not to put much more pressure against his ribs. "I don't like repeating myself, Potter. Do not test my patience in this regard." Glancing at the unfinished paperwork on his desk, and knowing that there was too much adrenaline still running through the boy's system to let him sleep, Snape considered that he may as well get some work done while waiting for the headmaster.

"I know that sending you back to bed would be useless at this point. Sit over there," he nodded towards the couch. Potter looked confused, but went and sat nonetheless. Snape rose slowly and carefully, moving to one of the bookshelves.

What to give a rash, reckless, abused Gryffindor who had a problem with guilt, and was destined to fight the strongest dark wizard of this era, having all the hopes of the wizarding world pinned upon his thin shoulders? No pressure, Severus. He thought hard for a long moment. Then he had a flash of brilliance.

Pulling a thin tome from the shelves, Snape ran his fingers over the beaten old cover before walking over and tossing it into Potter's lap. "The Art of War, by Sun Tzu. I want 36 inches by the end of summer on how the theories in this book can help you defeat The Dark Lord."

"You're assigning me homework?" Potter said in a horrified tone.

"I'm teaching you to think, Potter. You have courage – I'll grant you that. But you're impulsive. You need to learn the value of planning, of studying your opponent and identifying his weaknesses – as well as your own – before you attack." The boy still looked dismayed. "It's not that big of a book, Potter. If, after reading it, you still can't draw any parallels between it and your current situation, then I shall help you." He walked towards his desk, muttering, "But if that's the case then Merlin help us all."

An hour later, as he finished the last of his paperwork that evening, Snape glanced up to find the boy slumped against the back of the sofa, the book open on his chest. Snape gingerly rose from his chair behind the desk, carefully making his way across the room to the sleeping boy. He picked up the book, marking the page Potter had been on when he fell asleep. He was happy to see that he had made it halfway through chapter 3 before passing out.

With a little difficulty and a few twinges of discomfort, he bent and picked up Potters legs, laying him flat on the sofa. He took the boy's glasses off his face, which looked as if they were digging painfully into the side of his nose, and placed them on the side table on top of the book. He had just conjured a pillow and thick quilt, laying it across the sleeping boy when he heard the sudden flare of the floo and then headmaster's voice.

"Severus?"

Snape used his wand to dim the lights in his study, closing the door not quite all the way as he backed out of the room. Walking into the sitting room, Snape saw the shock on the old man's face as he took in his current condition, half naked and wearing only an unbuttoned white shirt.

"Are you alright, my boy?"

"Fine. But regarding Mr. Potter…" he paused wanting to get right to the point. "I have something of the utmost importance to discuss with you."