Searching for Wellness by DesertPlanet

Harry wrapped his threadbare, hand-me-down t-shirt around him as he desperately tried to stay warm. The temperature had dropped dramatically in the last few hours with dark clouds rolling in from the north-west. As the sun set, Harry could only hope the Dursleys would get home from their party soon. It wouldn’t be the first time they had locked him out in a storm, but he was already so cold.

Harry nestled himself against the back of the house and absentmindedly picked at a scab on his knee. Maybe, just maybe, the rain wouldn’t get him absolutely soaked. He knew he would dry off quickly once he got inside, but he was afraid to be wet and stuck outside for too long. If he got sick, there’d be hell to pay.

Looking into the distance, over the rows of houses whose back faced the houses of Privet Drive, Harry could vaguely make out the outline of a building… no, castle... hidden in the sky. Much of its walls and towers shrouded in the mist of the clouds that were boiling towards him. From the castle, he could hear the sound of a motorcycle flying through the air.

A sudden burst of green lightning shot from the clouds and struck the telephone poll up the street, the crack of thunder loud enough to make Harry’s ears hurt. Immediately, all lights in the neighborhood were lost as the power was cut. Turning instinctively to look at the now decimated poll barely standing out in the moonlight, Harry could see a pair of slightly reflective, animalistic eyes peering at him from the other side of the fence.

Another bolt of lightning flashed through the sky, temporarily blinding Harry. When his vision returned, the eyes were gone. Slowly, Harry stood and looked towards where the eyes had been. The eyes had been too far up to be an animal, even a large dog. And he could have sworn he had seen a human face surrounding those eyes.

But human eyes aren’t reflective like cat’s eyes.

A sinking dread filled Harry as rain began to fall, slowly at first then suddenly in a torrent. Another flash of lightning and Harry saw him. A figure in black, slowly weaving its way towards him as though drunk with eyes that reflected the flash of lightning. Harry tried to scramble backwards, but found he was frozen in place. He tried to scream, but couldn’t speak.

Tears rolled from his eyes as the thin, dark figure came towards him and gently stroked his cheek. The long, white fingers then ran under his chin and forcibly tilted his head to the side.

“I etur,” a dark, hoarse voice said. “Kaq i etur. Ju lutem. Gjaku.”

Harry tried to look at the figure holding him and found he couldn’t move his eyes. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain in his neck followed by a numbing sensation that travelled along his neck and into his face. His vision started to swim; the castle being swallowed by the storm clouds.

Another bolt of green lightning snapped overhead, jolting the figure into dropping him and running. The motorcycle roared through the sky towards him. A woman screamed as he fell.

He couldn’t move, he couldn’t stop the fall. A pit opened in the Dursley’s yard as he fell, its dark sides writhed with thousands of snakes. Down he fell, words whispered around him in a myriad of foreign tongues, snakes whipping out to try and bite him.

He could feel the ground rushing up to meet him. The bright light of the motorcycle following him into the pit. Seconds before he hit the ground, the motorcycle turned and a pale hand shot out from under a black robe and grabbed his shirt. His head snapped back.

Harry woke with a jolt and looked blearily around the Hospital Wing. His neck still felt numb and the lightning bolt scar felt as though it were on fire. Slowly, he flexed his fingers, relieved when he could move them. Sniffling slightly, he raised a hand to his neck. No scars were there, nothing physical remained of that night. He could still feel the fingers on his cheek and the teeth as they sunk into his neck however.

Vampire.

Harry slid down farther under the warm blankets and closed his eyes tightly. Tears seeped from under his eyelids, running down his cheek and onto the heated mattress below.

He really was a freak.

Harry was awoken the next morning by the sound of murmured voices in the room. They seemed oddly muffled, but it was definitely in the same room he was in. Opening his eyes, he could see the very blurred shape of Madam Pomfrey handing a red-headed child something while another red-head looked on. He could tell that the red-head who was standing was looking at him.

He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep when suddenly the voices became much clearer and suddenly he felt that strange emptying sensation in his lower abdomen. All of the previous day’s events came rushing back to him: magic, vampire, fame, new name, new family. It was a lot to take in.

“Good morning, dear,” Madam Pomfrey called. He was caught. “Your glasses are on the bedside table.”

He opened his eyes back up and looked across the room at the trio of blurs. Reaching out from under the warm blankets, he was shocked at just how cold it was in the room and snatched his glasses from the bedside table. He let his hand warm back up a minute before he unfolded the glasses and slid them on.

The two red heads looked exactly the same! The only obvious difference was that the one on the bed was covered in a green goo that was proving difficult to remove without removing his skin.

Madam Pomfrey sighed and shook her head in frustration. Of course the Wesley twins would be the ones to have to come to the Hospital Wing for a potions mishap. Those two hellions were going to blow themselves up one day if they weren’t careful. She was thankful that Ha-Julian was stable and she wasn’t having to worry about stabilizing him as well as dealing with these two for the umpteenth time this year.

“What exactly had you added to your ‘portable bog’ before it exploded?” she asked, frowning.

“We had just added an adders fang to the mix to try when it started to boil over,” the one who was standing said. “We were trying to increase the maximum size of the bog.”

“That explains the sticking then,” Madam Pomfrey said before walking over to the potions cupboard and pulling out a variety of potions. “George, pour these two on the worst areas. Fred, I’m sorry, but the hair has to go for a minute.”

“Not my luscious locks!” Fred said in mock anguish from the bed. “How could you!”

“Hush, foolish child. I have a hair growth serum for you as well.”

Harry watched as George take the two vials of potions and begin pouring them on the globs of goo stuck to his brother. It took a few minutes, but the goo started to harden and flake off, taking Fred’s hair with it.

“Into the shower with you! And use this to get the rest of it off!” Madam Pomfrey said, handing Fred a towel and a slightly larger vial of potion. “What do you two need a portable bog for anyways?”

“A ‘You Missed Us’ present for Ronnie,” George said, straight faced. “Who doesn’t like a bog in their bedroom?”

Harry laughed quietly under his blanket. Those two seemed like a lot of fun to be around.

“Oh, don’t you start getting ideas! I can hear you giggling!” Madam Pomfrey said rather sternly, but Harry could still hear some amusement in her voice.

“Who’s the kid, Poppy?” George asked as Fred went to the shower.

“That’s Madam Pomfrey to you,” she responded sternly. “All you need to know about that child is a patient of mine.”

“Fine, Madam Pomfrey, why does he get all the extra blankets? You never give me any extra blankets!”

“You don’t need them, you just want to use them to stage an escape so you can go continue your hair-brained antics. I’m onto you, George Weasley!”

“Aww, but seriously though. What’s with all the extra blankets?”

“Because it’s so cold,” Harry rasped, his voice dry from having no water or mouthwash this morning.

George looked in shock at the pile of blankets. The voice under them sounded so dry it hurt his throat to listen to it. And the speaker sounded so young. He had seen the wrist and hand of the person under the covers, but he couldn’t make out anything other than the kid was painfully thin.

“It’s not cold out here, it’s actually kinda warm,” George said, confused. Summer was definitely on its way in and the hospital wasn’t as cool as it had been in months prior. Besides, there were climate control spells on many of the rooms to make them more comfortable. Poppy normally had the Hospital Wing on the cooler side, so it was nice not being in there when it wasn’t freezing.

“He gets very cold very easily, he can have as many blankets as he needs to stay warm,” Madam Pomfrey said, walking over to where Ha-Julian (she really needed to practice not calling the boy Harry) was laying. A quick diagnostic spell and she was satisfied with how he was doing. It had taken many long hours of slowly running blood into the boy, but his haemoglobin was finally comfortably in the 70’s range. It had, unfortunately, already begun to drop, however that was to be expected.

“Do you want to sit up, dear?” Madam Pomfrey said, once she saw his blood pressure and heart rate were stable for the moment.

Harry nodded; what he really wanted was a shower and to rinse his mouth out. And maybe a bit of tube feeding to get his energy up. It had been at least 48 hours since he had last had any form of nutrition and it was starting to catch up to him.

A flick of her wand and the back of the bed rose to a more sitting position. One more flick and a heating charm warmed the air around the bed to a much warmer temperature than was in the room.

George’s jaw fell open. The child on the bed couldn’t have been older than his younger sister, but looked like he weighed maybe half her weight. Every bone was visible, his face gaunt and eyes sunken in. Even though he was wearing a hospital gown, it was obvious every rib was visible. In his right arm, it looked like a small tube was sticking out of the elbow. The bright green eyes George had seen peeking out from under the blanket were slightly magnified by the thick glasses he wore, making them seem even larger than they already were. The thick knitted cap the boy wore covered his forehead but there was still some long black hair that stuck out from under it.

“George, don’t stare,” Poppy said as she helped the skinny child rinse his mouth.

Harry blushed bright red as the boy stared at him. He had never been the object of this kind of attention before. He swallowed instinctively as the last swig of water entered his mouth. Immediately, his eyes widened in fear.

He was going to vomit in front of someone.

As soon as the cold water hit his stomach he immediately felt his stomach clench and the stomach acid race back up his throat, burning it raw. He felt as though his stomach and throat were being ripped to shreds. He tried to swallow it back down but it wouldn’t stop.

Weakly he grabbed for the emesis basin Madam Pomfrey was holding and started retching, eyes immediately watering and nose beginning to run. The more he vomited, the more he started gasping for air, which caused him to cry more. It hurt so much to throw up, and he had done more than his fair share of it for the last two years.

As the retching finally slowed, he realized Madam Pomfrey was gently rubbing his back and supporting him so he didn’t topple over.

“Shh, you’re going to be ok. Just breathe through it,” she was whispering to him.

He continued to dry heave for a few more minutes before finally collapsing backwards into the bed, completely exhausted with tears trailing down his sunken cheeks. He continued to hold his stomach until he finally passed out from exhaustion.

George, for his part, had stayed silent through the entire thing. He had seen his siblings throw up before, but none so violently or painfully. In his fifteen years, he had never been as scared as he was watching this child gasp and cry as he vomited. He’d seen broken bones from Quidditch, concussions, and scrapes and bruises of every kind, but he had never felt like he was watching someone actively dying in front of him.

And he was terrified.

Madam Pomfrey quickly cast another round of diagnostic spells over the boy, sighing in frustration at the changes she noticed from before his vomiting episode. She then spelled his mouth clean and laid the bed back a bit, covering him up again with the blankets and making sure to cover his neck with them in the way she always saw him pulling them up.

“Is… is he ok?” George asked quietly, more subdued than he had ever been in her presence.

“He will be,” Madam Pomfrey responded before conjuring a patronus. “Go to Severus. Julian vomited. Not tolerating water. Will likely need another transfusion soon.”

George stared in awe as the misty patronus zipped under the doors to the hospital wing.

“What’s wrong with him?” George asked again, clearly worried about the small boy under the blankets.

“He is very ill and has been for many years.”

“He’s not contagious, is he?”

“He is no danger to you.”

George nodded and watched as the small boy breathed. There was so little movement, one would think the child had passed away. And maybe it was his imagination, but something about the boy seemed slightly familiar. Maybe it was just the long, black hair though.

“Alright! I’m all clean!” Fred’s voice came belting out of the bathroom causing George to jump out of his stupor.

Madam Pomfrey got up to see to her other patient and give him the hair regrowth serum leaving George to continue watching the boy breathe. Once Fred was sorted out, hair grown and cut to his liking, he came out to see his brother sitting on the bed across from blanket-boy and looking as though he had seen a ghost.

“What’s up George?” Fred asked, looking at how shocked his brother was.

George shook himself and smiled back at his brother. “Nothing much, the ceiling, the sky, maybe some clouds. The usual.”

“Well I’m ready to go, come on!” Fred said, pulling his brother off the bed and heading towards the exit. George followed, continuing to stare at the boy in the bed as Madam Pomfrey looked over the small child.

As they left the wing, George heard footsteps briskly walking towards them and pulled Fred into an alcove with him. Together they watched as the greasy bat of the dungeons flew into the Hospital Wing.

“Come on,” he whispered to his twin as he quietly stalked back towards the door.

“What’s going on?” Fred whispered back, only for George to hold a finger to his lips to silence him.

George snuck closer to the door and peaked in for a second. He couldn’t hear anything that was being said and quickly realized a silencing spell had been put up, but he had a sneaking suspicion what was going on.

He gave a jerk of his head to signal to Fred they needed to move out.

Once out of range of the Hospital Wing, George pulled Fred into another alcove behind a statue of a centaur.

“I think I know why Snape is always in such a foul mood,” George said.

“Because he smells foul?” Fred said, pinching his nose and laughing. He stopped when he saw his brother’s worried face however. “What’s wrong.”

“The boy under the blankets. I saw him,” George said, voice quivering. “He looks like a skeleton. Not an ounce of fat on him. Even his muscles were tiny. He looked like he would be killed by a strong wind. Then ….”

George turned a little green himself as he remembered the episode he had witnessed. Fred was starting to get worried now too. What had he missed while he was showering?

“He threw up,” George finally finished. “He had a sip of water, on accident because I was looking at him, and started throwing up. He could hardly breathe and he was too weak to sit up on his own so Poppy had to hold him up. He was gasping and crying and just couldn’t stop puking.”

Fred could only stare as his twin got more frantic.

“You know how grouchy Mum gets when she hasn’t slept in a while?” George asked suddenly.

“Yeah? What’s this got to do with the blanket boy?”

“Poppy sent a patronus to Snape telling him that ‘Julian’ had thrown up. I think… maybe… Snape is his father.”

Fred laughed for a few moments, thinking his brother was joking. Snape? A dad? He was a known child hater. He wanted nothing to do with any kind of children.

“I’m serious!” George said, no trace of humor in his voice.

“But he hates kids!” Fred exclaimed. “He despises every student who steps into his classroom. Slytherins less than others, but even they get on his nerves.”

“What if he hates what he can’t have?” George asked solemnly.

“What do you mean?”

“He hates kids because his kid is so sick. He has to watch us have fun and go to school and know his kid isn’t able to do that. He doesn’t sleep and gets exhausted and testy because he is up all night taking care of his kid. He doesn’t want anyone to know because he doesn’t want pity. Even the Slytherins say that he rarely sleeps.”

“I heard earlier in the year from some of the upper years that he has been working on some ‘project,’” Fred said, continuing to be skeptical.

“His kid is his project,” George said. “He’s trying to get him better.”

Fred stood in silence for a minute, a frown on his face. It seemed implausible, but at the same time everything fit.

“What do you think happened to his mum?” Fred asked.

“Dunno, weird to think of someone having sex with Snape. Maybe she died?” George said.

The twins stood there a moment pondering the implications of the idea. Snape was foul tempered, sure, but the Slytherins respected the man greatly for some reason. Maybe they knew more about his hidden life?

“Do you think he’d even be able to feed at this point?” Severus asked, looking at the small child in the bed. He had thankfully not been in class when Poppy’s patronus came bursting into the room. It would have been hard to explain and he wasn’t sure if he was ready for the students in the school to begin to find out of his “son”’s existence.

“I don’t know, Severus. I really do not know. We already know he doesn’t tolerate the tube feedings, which we expected. But to not tolerate water? We need to get nourishment and hydration into him. The blood transfusions helped, but those cells will die. The magic he got from your blood helped him quite a lot, but there was a massive drop in his magic levels in his core shortly after he stopped vomiting. His core. He has no reserves. None. His body is using his core as a last ditch effort to survive. But even that is beginning to fail because he simply doesn’t have the energy to survive.”

Severus sat on the bed next to the child he had been tasked to keep as a son. He had failed to protect Lily, he wouldn’t fail to protect her child.

“Is he somewhat stable for now?” Severus asked.

“For now, but for how long? He is far more unstable than I thought. I know Albus may fight this, but he may need to be moved to St. Mungo's.”

Severus nodded. “As his … father… now, I can override Albus’s wishes. Albus got me the paperwork ‘proving’ paternity earlier today.”

Poppy nodded. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but this case was rapidly becoming too dangerous to keep in a school hospital ward. If it had been any child other than Harry Potter who had come in in this condition, she would have immediately sent them to St. Mungo's. No question about it.

“Will he be stable enough for me to speak with my prefects for a bit?” Snape asked.

“He should be fine now that he is asleep. His magic is most stable in this state.”

Severus nodded and in a flurry of robes rushed out of the hospital wing. The halls were beginning to fill with students as they left one class and made their way to another. A flick of his wand and a small ball of green light shot down the hallways searching for the Slytherin prefects, the head boy, and the head girl. They would know it was an emergency when they saw it and would immediately report to Severus’s office.

Severus quickly made it down the back staircases to the dungeons and made it to his office just as the first of the prefects arrived.

Severus unlocked the office door and allowed the girl in. She was followed shortly by the other five slytherin prefects (several of which were panting as though they had run the length of the castle) as well as the Head Boy (a Gryffindor) and Head Girl (a Ravenclaw). Severus waited a minute for everyone to make their way into the office and find a good place to stand.

“Thank you all for your diligence in coming here so quickly and on such short notice,” Severus began, crossing his arms over his chest. He knew he could pull off a lie, however he hadn’t had much time to think about what he planned to say. “As many of you may know, I have been working on a personal project for the past four years. Unfortunately my project took a rather unexpected turn a few days ago. As such, I may be forced to leave my classroom at random intervals throughout the day. There may even be days where I am forced to use a substitute professor.

“Should this occur, I expect every one of you to continue holding all members of Slytherin house to the highest standard of behaviour. Should I not be in my office for an extended amount of time and it be necessary for you to speak with me about the behaviour of members of the house, please notify the Headmaster and he shall be in touch with me.”

All of the students in attendance nodded. This did not seem like an emergency call, but maybe something had happened and he only had a limited amount of time to speak with them? He didn’t seem frantic, but then again he never did unless a potion was in the process of exploding.

“Questions?” he asked, knowing if he didn’t pretend to answer their questions, rumors would start.

“What kind of project are you working on, sir?” Enida Tetcher, the Head Girl said.

“One which is of high personal importance,” Severus said, the bright green eyes on Julian's gaunt face coming to the forefront of his mind. “In its current state, it is highly unstable and could have disastrous consequences if not responded to in a timely manner.”

Every child’s face in the room paled a couple of shades at the seriousness of his tone.

“How long should we be on this state of alert?” Matilda Green, the 6th year prefect, asked.

“I would expect at least until the end of the year. Should this change, I shall inform you.”

Severus waited a few minutes for anyone else to ask a question. When none were forthcoming, he dismissed the students. As they walked out, he turned and sat behind his desk, steepling his fingers and pondering what he was going to do with the child … his child… in the hospital wing.

Hydration they could give him via the IV Poppy had placed when he first came in. A barbaric muggle device, but it worked to give blood and hydrating fluids in a pinch. Nutrition would be more difficult. If his stomach was unable to move the food through, there was no point in giving it to him. It would cause more harm than good. Potions, too, required a functioning digestive tract. Maybe the muggles had a type of nutrition they could use to supplement him?

If they could get his magical core stabilized, it would be more feasible to convince his core to heal his digestive tract. From there, they were much closer to being home-free. But a magical core was an energy sink. It would always try to protect and repair the wizard, but if there wasn’t enough energy to sustain it, it would pull from “non-essential” body stores to feed itself so it could protect what it deemed “essential systems.”

They needed liquid energy. Not a stimulant, but actual energy.

Severus sighed and opened his desk drawer with the intention of writing out possible potions they could use to increase his energy levels or could slow the degradation of a damaged magical core. He never pulled out a sheet of parchment paper, however, as sitting on top of all of his stationary was the answer to all of his questions.

A confiscated chocolate frog card.

Chocolate. Sugar. Glucose. Liquid energy absorbable through the mouth.

Severus quickly closed the desk drawer, summoning his money pouch and travel cloak from his personal quarters, and left his office in a rush. He ended up blowing past one of the prefects who was just in his office. She swallowed hard as she took in the look of determination on his face. Whatever happened to his project must have been bad for him to be leaving the castle in the middle of the day despite having afternoon classes. Four years of work for it to all go horribly awry, she couldn’t even imagine.