Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Chapter 32
Severus had given up his vigil at his son’s bedside in favor of pacing their quarters.

It had been two hours since the second dose of the antispasmotic and Elias was remaining rather relaxed though Severus believed much of that was due to the healing sleep the boy was in. It had been four hours since he and Madam Pomfrey had finished frantically working on him to release the muscles in his body from their contractured state and allow him to breathe. Five hours since he had returned from the Death Eater meeting and found his son blue in the face and gasping; an image he would rather forget but knew he wouldn’t any time soon. Seven hours since he had been called to the meeting itself.

Four hours since Elias’s last dose of Fulgur, of which he was still working to get back into the therapeutic range since missing the dose that morning. A potion which he had been within the therapeutic range of for nearly twenty-nine days, which wasn’t that long at all but was rather telling in Severus’s mind.

Due to how little of the potion he was able to take at any given time, getting the amount of the potion into him that would truly help stabilize his condition was a long and arduous one. With most potions such as these, there was a loading dose to kickstart the effects of the potion on whoever was taking it. Fulgur, due to its poisonous properties on a wizard’s magical core, was not one of these potions. The one, single dose which was missed due to the reaction to the headache potion was enough to set them back slightly in getting the levels in his body up to the proper levels. In fact, Severus had already gone about making the potion required to test Elias’s blood and core magic levels to make sure the dose was adequate, providing the magical core with support, and was not causing any unknown damage.

Typically these tests were run thirty-one days after the treatment was started but that missing dose had bumped the testing back by two days to allow his titers to get back into their accurate range. It wasn’t uncommon for potions requiring long term usage to need routine testing to make sure they were doing what they were intended to and not causing more harm than good. This was especially true with a potion with the potential to harm as high as what Fulgur’s was.

The thing about a potion as potent as Fulgur wasn’t just maintaining a therapeutic level without kicking over into the toxic realm, but also maintaining the amount in his system which was high enough to have an effect. Missing one dose certainly would have lowered the overall levels in his system, but would they have dropped outside of the therapeutic range? Even so, would those levels have dropped low enough after missing a single dose to cause him to have a relapse in his condition which was arguably worse than the first one?

No, there was absolutely no way. There was not a portion of his brain which even remotely believed that missing one single dose and following it with a slightly larger evening dose had been the cause of this. The amount of potion in Elias’s system may have dropped to slightly subtherapeutic levels, but there was something else going on. There had to be.

The night of Elias’s first relapse, he and Draco had been called to the Dark Lord’s side to deliver word on if Harry Potter had been located as well as drop off the previously requested potions. They had been out of the house for only a few hours and, when they returned, they had found Elias to be extremely confused, having muscle spasms which were worse than they had been while he was in the hospital, and was extremely lethargic. Severus tried to remember if he had put up the ward on Elias’s room at the time to notify him of any possible seizures, but was unsure if he had or not.

This time, however, he was positive the ward was set when he had left. There was no seizure which precluded this event and he was now beginning to doubt a seizure had happened before the other one either. There was no seizure, the levels of Fulgur in his system may have still been rather subtherapeutic, but nowhere near what they had been during the first relapse, and he hadn’t been exposed to anyone who could possibly have tortured him.

As soon as Elias had received his official diagnosis, Severus had found any books on the condition he could. It had been a great relief to find that the condition was generally considered stable and could be managed through potions provided the damage done to the child was not severe enough. It was not a progressive illness, or at least wasn’t known to be so. He recalled heaving a sigh of relief at the time as his fears of Elias getting worse were assuaged.

But if that were the case, why would he have now had a total of two relapses in the course of two months?

”Him! Was mad! So mad!”

“‘M gonna die! ‘e’s gonna find me!”


Severus stopped short as the memory of Elias’s first relapse floated through his mind’s eye. Him. He’s going to kill me. That’s what Elias had said when he came to. It hadn’t mattered that he was nearly in a coma for a week, whatever had triggered the relapse had been fresh on his mind and involved someone who was actively trying to kill him.

At the time, Severus had thought he was speaking about his uncle. The brute of a man had been neglectful and was verbally abusive but hadn’t laid a hand on his son purely for the sake of violence that Severus knew of. There was one other male in Elias’s life who was actively searching for him, however. Someone who if he found him he would most certainly kill him.

The Dark Lord Voldemort.

Both times this had occurred, the Dark Lord had summoned Severus to his side. Both times, Severus himself had been tortured. Both times, Elias hadn’t been on potions (or at least enough potions) which actively modulated both his magical core and the way his nerves fired. Both bloody times.

The Cruciatus curse was by far and away the darkest of the three unforgivables. There was a case to be made for beneficial uses of the killing curse and imperius, but not for torturing someone. What truly set Cruciatus apart from other curses used to torture and maim, however, was the intent which was required. Even as a sixth year, Severus had created a curse which could fillet a man in one foul swoop, but the intent didn’t have to be there. No, to properly use Cruciatus, one had to have the desire and drive to actively torture another individual. If cast correctly, a phenomenon known to enthusiasts of the Dark Arts as flow-back occurred which would give the user an almost high, tingling feeling.

It was addictive, uncommon even amongst the darkest of curses, and the reason the curse was so favored amongst the Death Eaters.

“I am aware of this connection, you idiotic rat!”

Elias and the Dark Lord were connected. Truly, magically connected. Elias was getting caught in the flow-back from the Dark Lord’s curses. But rather than receiving the normal flow-back high, he was receiving the actual pain from the curse. He had, in essence, been hit by no less than two cruciatus curses in the course of the last twelve hours.

Severus gasped as this realization sunk in and quickly spun on his heel and sprinted to the potions he had stored in his room and grabbed an anti-Cruciatus potion. Pausing for a moment as he mentally ran through the ingredients and possible reactions to the potion, he nodded with satisfaction and sprinted back to Elias’s room before spelling the potion into the boy’s stomach and praying it wasn’t too late to prevent further nerve damage.

Casting the potions vial to the side, Severus collapsed into the desk chair shaking. Knowing there was a connection between the two made him feel sick. Was there anything else about his son that he was missing?

Brushing Elias’s fringe off of his forehead, Severus shuddered slightly at the rather tepid feeling the healing sleep gave the boy’s body. He shouldn’t feel this cold, but it would help his brain recuperate from the assault it had just undergone. The muscle relaxer cream was beginning to wear off, causing the small tremors to come back, but they were so subtle Severus could only tell they were occurring when he actually touched the boy. The scar from where he had fallen during his first seizure stood out starkly on his pale forehead, but there was something strange about it.

In the middle of the scar, roughly where his lightning bolt scar had sat, a slight darkening of the skin could be seen. The few remnants of his first scar seemed rather inflamed as well and there was a small amount of dried blood coming from one of these small remains.

Severus quickly took stock of the still rumpled bedding which surrounded his son and found several patches of blood on the sheets before returning to examining Elias’s forehead.

When the first relapse had happened, Severus vaguely remembered wondering if the stitches the muggles had placed on his forehead had broken during his episode and had been rather surprised to find that had not been the case. The stitches had held, but one portion of the wound itself had begun to bleed. Running his finger over the now healed scar, Severus was rather unsurprised to find the area was inflamed and seemed to feel rather swollen and hard. He was bleeding under the skin; with any luck it would only show as a bruise, but either a bruise or a hematoma would be easy enough to explain away with the amount of thrashing he had been doing during this ‘episode.’

Only two more hours until Madam Pomfrey came to remove him from the healing sleep so they could better assess the damage done. Two more hours until they had to make the decision on whether or not Elias would have to go to St. Mungo’s for more intensive treatment. Two more hours until they knew anything for certain.

That was more than enough time to send an owl to Healer Shannon.
Chapter End Notes:
Short chapter, I know, but we have some big things coming up. Some funny things, some not-so-funny things, some big reveals... you know things like that. So, sorry for the short chapter, but you also just got 2 chapters last week. You can't be too mad.

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