The Alchemist - Chapter 68

[northangel27]

I know, I know.  Finally...  Sorry it took so long.

Chapter 68

 

“Don’t be ridiculous please.  You know it is impossible.”  He shrugged away from Poppy’s probing fingers distractedly as he stared up at Albus’ irritatingly serene eyes.  “Sending me to St. Mungo’s will only draw attention to a situation that is best kept...”  He batted Poppy’s hand away again as she attempted to force a spoonful of some insipid potion down his throat, knocking a stream of sticky brown liquid down the front of her impeccably white robes in the process.

 

“Oh Severus, do try to be agreeable!”  She snapped in exasperation.  “Albus…”  She implored the old man at his side and he smiled at her indulgently, and then turned his eyes back to his. 

 

“You are not well, Severus.  That is clear, and we cannot afford for your health to fail now, as you well know.  Do take your potion.”

 

Poppy filled the spoon again , but he ignored it, and instead snatched the tiny brown bottle from her other hand and downed the rest with a grimace.  With a scowl she snatched it back, tilted it a little, and then realizing it was empty, growled quietly in frustration and turned on her heel to march back into her office, using her wand to clean the front of her robes as she went.

 

Dumbledore watched her go and then returned his gaze to him.  “You will go to St. Mungo’s this afternoon, Severus, and I don’t want to hear anything more about it.  We are at a critical juncture and we cannot afford for your health to fail now.”

 

“You can’t be serious…”

 

“I am quite serious.”

 

“And you don’t think that it might look highly suspicious, you don’t think that it might raise questions that have no easy answers, questions that could endanger not only me, but everything we have worked so hard to achieve…?”

 

“Oh, I have the utmost confidence in you, Severus.  I’m sure that you will come up with something.  In the meantime we must make sure that you are functioning at full capacity, as it were.  You will go, and you will allow them to examine you fully.”

 

“So, I am to have no say in this, despite the fact that I am the one who is going to have to come up with some sort of bloody excuse for Riddle?”

 

The man beside his bed simply smiled.  “Lily is already there.  I sent her this morning.  If you go now you can flew back together.”

 

“What?”

 

“Yes, I’ve sent her too.  I’m sure you are aware that your illnesses are connected.”

 

“Of course I am.”

 

“Harry went with her.  He insisted on it – rather forcefully actually…”

 

“Yes, well this isn’t the first time his mother has fallen ill.  I’m sure that he wanted to hear for himself what those fools at St. Mungo’s would have to say.”

 

“Perhaps…”  The old man paused, thoughtful.  “How is Mr. Malfoy’s assignment proceeding?  Is he any closer to his goal?”

 

“I’ve no idea.”

 

“I see…”

 

“When you return from St. Mungo’s we need to talk.  Come and see me tomorrow evening, Severus.  There is something important I must tell you.”   At that moment Poppy reemerged from her office across the ward and marched toward them, another bottle of potion in her hand.  Dumbledore turned to leave, but stopped and turned back for just a moment.  “Oh, and Severus, remind Harry that he has lessons in my office this evening.  It is quite imperative that he arrive on time.”

 

“You know Lily doesn’t approve of that.”

 

The old man simply smiled and walked away, as Poppy arrived at the side of his bed and stuck yet another spoonful of potion under his nose.

 

                                                                   xXx

 

Things were not going as Lily had anticipated, and she wondered if perhaps Albus had known exactly how things would transpire when he had insisted on sending her here.

 

She had known the minute they had mentioned the third floor, where it was they were sending her.  Harry had known too, and his eyes had grown wide, his grip on her hand tightening as he raised himself to his full height.  “She doesn’t have permanent spell damage!  That’s not what this is!”

 

The attending healer was a young man with flushed cheeks and bright, eager blue eyes who looked as though the possibility of her being a complicated case was just the opportunity he had been looking for to further his career.  Her interfering son was apparently not in the plan.  “I am sure that you have your mother’s best interests at heart, son, but you had best leave this to us…”  His tone was patronizing and it grated on her nerves to no end.  The boy couldn’t be more than five or six years older than Harry.

 

“I think I know what is best for my own mother,” Harry responded.  His voice was cold and deceptively calm.  She’d not heard him use that tone when angry before.  Reigning himself in was not something that came naturally.  He had too much of her nature in him.  But she knew what the tone meant well enough, she had heard it dozens of times from Severus’ lips.  She tightened her grip on her son’s fingers.

 

“It’s alright Harry.  Let them do their tests.  It can’t do any harm.  Besides Neville and Luna were headed there anyway, and I had hoped to visit with Alice for a bit before we headed back if Neville was agreeable to it.”

 

Harry looked doubtful, but the Healer leapt at the opportunity.  “There, you see son, listen to your mother.  She’s got some sense.  Let us run the tests, and then we’ll know for sure.  You just go back out to the waiting room and we’ll call you when she’s all finished.”

 

“I’m going with her.”  There was no room for debate in his tone, but the Healer thought he’d try anyway.

 

“Oh no, that’s impossible, I’m afraid…”

 

“I’m not asking.”  That same quiet, calm, slightly dangerous sound she knew so well…

 

The healer blanched a little, and then looked from Harry to her and then back to Harry again.  “Yes, well it’s highly irregular and I…”

 

His eyes came back to hers, beseeching, but she just smiled serenely.  “He’s not asking Mr. Hohenheim…”

 

“Yes I…”  He faltered as she continued to stare at him, smiling calmly.  “Well, yes I suppose that you can come, but you must let the healers do what they need to do, son, do you understand?”

 

Harry didn’t respond, and finally the man sighed, and snatched up the clipboard on the counter beside him, his voice tight and clipped.  “Come then.”

 

They took the lift to the third floor and she was instantly glad that Luna had insisted on accompanying Neville when he had asked to come along and visit his mother.  The “Permanent Spell Damage” ward was a sad, soul draining sort of a place, and she couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to be forced to spend the rest of one’s days there.  Surely if you weren’t fully mad when you came in you would be within mere weeks of being admitted. 

 

The walls were painted in cheery colors and most of the healers they passed had bright smiles on their faces, as they attended to their patients, but with the exception of a few, they seemed strained, false.  Everything here was designed to project an image of normalcy.  It was nothing but lies…

 

No doubt some of the residents had merely been the innocent victims of some unfortunate accident, but others – others like Alice and Frank Longbottom – had been driven to madness by the very direct and purposeful use of the darkest imaginable magic.  And that was the thing with dark magic – it left a residue, a black, sickly, clinging mist that seemed to hang over and around whomever it had been used against.  The collective pall of that after effect could be felt only too acutely in a place such as this where so many of the suffering were kept together.  It seemed to suck at your joy like a dementor feeding.  She shivered a little and again felt a wave of gratitude wash over her as Harry’s warm hand tightened around hers in assurance.

 

They stopped suddenly and the Healer motioned to a small row of chairs against the wall.  “You can wait there.  Someone will be with you in a moment.”  And then he left.  There were four chairs and she and Harry took the two at one end, as the one on the other end was taken by a small, painfully underfed boy, who looked no more than eight or nine.  She could not see his face as his dark hair hung down over it, but he seemed completely content sitting there alone.  His feet were bare and he swung his legs back and forth beneath him as he traced invisible patterns on the palms of his hands. 

 

When they had first approached she had been horrified that anyone might let a child wait for their parents unattended in a place such as this, but now she began to wonder if perhaps the child was not a patient.  The thought horrified her more.

 

Something about the boy drew her and she couldn’t quite manage to tear her eyes away.  Harry must have noticed because he leaned in close to whisper in her ear.  “I think he might be a patient…I…I didn’t know they had kids here.”

 

“Neither did I,” she whispered back.  She thought she saw the boy’s head cock slightly to one side as they spoke, but she couldn’t be sure.  Had he heard them?  “He looks lonely.  Maybe we should talk to him…”

 

“He looks like he wants to be left alone,” Harry replied, and he glanced eagerly up and down the corridor as though in the hopes of catching sight of the Healer meant to attend to them.

 

But something about the boy tugged painfully at her heart and she couldn’t help it.  Getting to her feet, she walked over and knelt down on the floor in front of him.  His legs stopped their swinging and his finger froze in its tiny axis across his palm. 

 

“Hello…”  She spoke as quietly as possible, not wanting to startle him.  He kept his head bowed, but she knew he had heard her.  “My name is Lily.  What’s yours?”

 

He said nothing, but his legs began to swing again after a moment or two and he resumed his palm drawing.  She watched it, mesmerized.  It was not random.  There was order to the patterns he was drawing.  They seemed to be symbols of some kind.  If they were letters, they were nothing she recognized.  He had long, thin fingers and skin so pale, stretched so thin over his bones, it was almost transparent.

 

She opened her own hand, palm upward in her lap and began to attempt to duplicate the symbols, to see if she could find some meaning.  Strangely, the first symbol she duplicated seemed to leave a warmth and a tingle on the skin where she had traced it and she pulled back in shock.  They were magical symbols, and of Merlin knew what origin. 

 

He noticed and she saw his legs stop again, and this time he looked up, his eyes locking with hers for the first time.  They were pale yellow, with starbursts of peridot green around the irises, jarring against his pale skin, but more shocking still was the oldness of them.  They were not a child’s eyes…and yet somehow they were.  She felt terribly as though she knew him, but from where she had no idea.

 

He reached out and took her hands, and she let him.  His were burning hot, as though he were gripped by some great fever, but his eyes looked clear and lucid and she could not perceive any other indication that he might be ill.  “Sidereus.”

 

“What?”  Her brow furrowed in confusion.

 

Harry had turned now, for the boy had spoken out loud for the first time, and his voice was clear and almost unearthly beautiful.  A soft, gentle tenor that was somehow simultaneously soothing and commanding.

 

“Sidereus,” the boy repeated.  “You are Lily.  I am Sidereus.”

 

“Oh…” she nodded in understanding.  “It is nice to meet you, Sidereus.  Are you waiting for someone?”

 

The boy glanced over at Harry for a moment, and then back at her.  “I was waiting for you.”

 

She laughed softly.  “For me?  Did you know I was coming then?”

 

“Yes.”

 

She swallowed hard.  “You knew I was coming today?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“How?”

 

“Because you are already here.”  His small hands moved up to clasp over his heart.

 

She smiled softly, indulgently, not knowing what he meant.  “Where is your mother?”

 

“He knows.”

 

“Who?”

 

“The other one.  The one that comes after you.”

 

She looked around them confused.  “You mean Harry?”  She motioned toward him.  He was staring at the two of them with a slightly concerned look in his eye.  “Harry’s my son.  I don’t think he knows where your mother is.”

 

The boy looked at Harry for a moment and then shook his head.  “No.  Not him.  The other one.”

 

She shook her head.  “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you mean…Your mother is not here with you then?”

 

The boy just shook his head, and then suddenly, and unexpectedly his eyes filled, and he looked so frightened, so lonely, so utterly lost that it broke her heart.  His face crumpled and she reached out for him, but the moment she did his eyes instantly darkened and he batted her hand away with remarkable strength for a child.  “Don’t touch me!”

 

She pulled away in shock, holding her hands up in surrender.  “I’m sorry.”

 

The anger faded just as quickly to be replaced with the former blank serenity as he went back to tracing the symbols into his palm.

 

“Oh there he is Lucy…”  She turned to see a pair of Healers bustling down the corridor toward them.  The older of the two woman, a plump, pleasant looking woman with soft grey hair pulled back into a loose bun and sparkling hazel eyes, hurried up to them.  “He hasn’t hurt you, has he?”

 

She stood up and shook her head.  “Oh heavens, no.”

 

“Well thank Merlin for that.  He is given to bouts of violence sometimes.  Its rare, but he’s been particularly restless lately…” the woman turned to the younger blond woman at her side.  “Lucy, you must take care he doesn’t wander.  You know how good he is at sneaking off without being noticed.”

 

She noticed the boy smile beneath the curtain of his hair at that, but the two women didn’t seem to see.  The older woman turned back to her.  “Are you Lily Potter?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Oh well, lovely.  You are just the one I was looking for.  Apparently there are some tests to be run.”

 

“Yes, I believe so.”

 

The woman nodded.  “Well, come with me then.  Lucy, you take Sid back to the ward.”

 

“My son Harry will be joining me.”

 

The woman turned and seemed to notice him for the first time.  A smile lit her face.  “Ah yes, Harry Potter, I remember you.  Do you remember?  I attended to the father of that friend of yours a year or so again.  The snake bites.”

 

Harry smiled back.  “Oh yes.  I think I do remember you.  Mr. Weasley, was the patient - my friend Ron’s dad.”

 

“Yes an accident at the Ministry wasn’t it?”

 

“Not an accident!”  They all turned as the boy leapt from his seat his pale eyes wide.  “Not an accident.”

 

“Shh…”  The blond girl smoothed a hand over the boys head.  “Its alright Sid.  You come back to the ward with me like a good boy and I’ll give you a sweetie.”  But the boy lunged forward and grabbed Lily’s hand before the girl could stop him, and began to trace a new pattern into her palm over and over again.  She shivered a little.  It felt like cool water trickling over her skin.

 

The blond Healer stepped forward and reached out as though to restrain him, but she shook her head.  “Don’t.  It’s alright.”

 

“Mrs. Potter,” the older woman interjected.  “We don’t know the nature of the symbols he draws.  It is probably best to not allow him to do that.”

 

“No, it’s alright,” she repeated.

 

His little finger raced across her palm over, and over and over again, at a feverish pace, as though desperate that it should be burned into her skin.  “It heals…it heals…it heals…”  He took up the simple mantra, repeating it in time with the journey of his finger across her palm. 

 

“What does it heal?”  She couldn’t help but ask.

 

He stopped suddenly then, and clasped her hand in both of his hot ones, his eyes wide and wise.  “Accidents.”

 

She smiled.  “How useful.  I will be sure to remember it then.”

 

“Remember…remember…remember…”  He began to quietly chant this new reminder to himself, and finally let the blond woman lead him away.

 

The older woman beside her clucked her tongue as they turned and headed the other way.  “Poor little mite.  Both his parents dead, and him all alone and in that state.”

 

She glanced over her shoulder at the retreating form of the young woman and small boy.  “What happened to him?”

 

“Oh it was horrible…”  The woman leaned in close and lowered her voice.  “I shouldn’t say, patient confidentiality you know, but the poor little thing hasn’t a one in the world...  It was a bad home, parents always fighting.  We had his mother in here more than once over the years, broken bones, bruises and cuts.  ‘I fell down the stairs…’ she’d say.  As though any of us believed it.

 

“One night his Da must have got particularly worked up.  No one knows what happened.  When they found him he was as you saw him now.  His father was dead.  Avada Kedavra they say.  His mother was brought here.  She didn’t last but three days.  The injuries were too severe, and it seemed that she had lost the will to live…They say…They think that it was the boy that killed his father…”

 

She shook her head, her heart sick, and looked back over her shoulder, but the corridor was empty.  “How old was he?”

 

“Six.”

 

“Good God.  How horrible.”

 

The older woman nodded.  “Indeed it is.  You seemed to have a way with him though…”  Her eyes brightened.  “Ah, and here we are…”  She pushed open a door and they entered a room that was bright and cheery looking, with pale yellow walls and floor to ceiling windows.  “We’re just going to start of simple, see if your magic has been affected at all.  Simple charms to start…  Have you brought your wand?”

 

She nodded.

 

“Excellent.  Let’s begin then shall we…”

Comments

[mary-sm2.livejournal.com]

Hey hey hey!!! A new chapter!!!! And a great one at that!!! Up to now, not one has left me with so many questions in mind!!! That little Sid wracked my brains, for a moment I thought lily was seeing a younger Sev than the one she could remember, until I read that Harry saw him too! I loved the fact that a young child was there speaking in enigmas and predicting a small glimpse of the futur! Wow!! I'm eager for the rest!
Lily's easiness with children made my heart warmer, harry is becoming someone worthy (I loved the comparison with Sev in Lily's mind!) Luna being so cute to Neville, Sev refusing to go to the healers only to protect his love, what he told Albus before leaving..... Your characters are growing so much interesting, I'm starting to love them one after the other! It feels like reading, Agatha christie, or Grisham.... too many questions and answers there yet out of reach, you can't afford to just read, you must think and that's great!!! thanks for all of this entertainment!!
ps: Hohenheim???? Lol!! Now where in Merlin's name did you get that name from????

[lilyevans-snape.livejournal.com]

Hohenheim: The great Alchemist Paracelsus' full name was Phillipus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim! What a mouthful. lol. He is considered to be one of the fathers of modern chemistry and pharmaceutical medicine, as well as being a respected physician and university lecturer.

I'm glad you liked this chapter. I'm writing another one right now :-), and there is alot more Luna and Neville!

[called-daughter.livejournal.com]

Que the mystery music. What is going on with this Sid kid? Crazy! I'm probably over thinking his character but it just seems like he is very important to this story. Hmmmmm....

Can't wait for the next chapter!!!

[lilyevans-snape.livejournal.com]

lol. Maybe he is, and maybe he isn't.... I'm actually writing the next chapter right now, so hopefully it will be up in a bit. Glad you liked it, and sorry it took so long.

Oh, and by the way. I've totally been missing that little music video feature you used to do on your journal. I loved that :-)

[called-daughter.livejournal.com]

Oh thanks. :) I've been busy lately, perhaps I will start again soon.

[mary-sm2.livejournal.com]

Lol!! This shows how narrow minded we are, if it does not touch our field, we don't know much about other lecturers! thank's for the info!!!

[lilyevans-snape.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I seem to have the unfortunate problem that my brain has a very ineffective filter, hence I seem to absorb literally thousands of pieces of useless information and trivia such as this. lol. Very irritating. At least I don't have the curse (blessing?) of a photographic memory like my husband :-).

[mary-sm2.livejournal.com]

Curse or Blessing? It depends on what there is to remember! Most of the time it's a curse!! Lol!!!