The Prince's Tale

The Dying Potions Master

I woke up with a start, and with a massive headache. I didn't know where I was, or what time it was, and in the dim-lit room, it was hard to tell. My eyes felt heavy, and my body ached all over. I struggled to retrieve my senses, and all of a sudden I remembered the events of last night and I bolted upright, awarding me with yet another wave of dizziness. I tried to focus to distinguish the eerie shapes in the room. It was a stuffy little room whose walls were aligned with immense bookshelves. The curtains of a single window were drawn but through a tiny gap I could see the dust particles. The whole room was dusty, and I was starting to feel a tingling sensation in my nose. I myself was lying on a couch which was as dark and dusty as the rest of the room. My clothes and my hands were still covered in filth, and I dared not find out just how wretched the rest of me was. I was a mess. Oh god, where was I?
I shifted myself on my elbows to try to study my surroundings better. There was no sign of Snape. I listened carefully, but I heard nothing. Did he dump me in a random abandoned house and just leave me here? It would seem so much like him to do something like that. Or maybe not, I thought, as it suddenly dawned on me that if I was left alone...I was free. As soon as I got out of here I'd apparate to my home and I could just as well forget the events of last night. That thought was too good to be true, and obsessed with the thought of freedom, I gathered up enough strength stand up from the couch and walk with wobbly knees to what I believed to be the front door. It seemed so easy almost as if the door was speaking, "that's right. That's all you need to do. Open it." I wrenched the cold handle and pulled with all my might
Locked. I leaned against the door feeling frustrated. Of course, I shouldn't have expected it to be so easy. I was his prisoner after all. God, this felt like a hangover. A hell-ish kind of hangover. I really couldn't think properly. Leaning against the door, I noticed for the first time my bags were dumped next to the couch. "Oh how sweet of him," I thought sarcastically, "He remembered to bring that along too." Where is my wand? I thought. I need my wand. I searched my pockets but they were nowhere in sight. I rummaged through my bags and found it there...snapped in two.
"Oh no," I moaned, looking at the pathetic instrument. It must have snapped under all that load when I stumbled. It was silly to put in the bag in the first place. The sight of the broken wand broke something inside me too, and it was like all my hopes suddenly evaporated. I didn't really know what I was expecting. You know, during a war, it's so easy to think ahead of the days when it will all be over, but once you've actually reached those days you're kind of left with only a sense of loss. I felt ungrateful, seeing as I was way better of than most hidden in the safe walls of Hogwarts, but even that place didn't prove to be so secure any more. I was not scared of Snape, and I never was. It was not so much him that I was afraid of as the thought of what he might do next. Even though I had been relatively physically close to the man, he felt so abstract nevertheless, like I was always seeing him through another lense. Like he was never a part of my life at all. Last night had changed all that. If I thought Snape was just a story I was meant to slightly meddle with, yesterday had hit me with reality. He was real alright, both in body and mind, and the fear I saw in his eyes had reflected mine, and I had never felt so frightened in my entire life. But again, it was not him I was afraid of. It was the unkown.
Perhaps that's what he was fearing too. Perhaps he felt the exact same way as I did. But for different reasons.
The locked door had shut me away from certain things, but it had somehow unlocked the door to my reasoning. My legs had buckled under me, and I had slid to the floor. Oddly enough, I felt all of a sudden incredibly serene. This may not be the freedom I had quite imagined, but it was a different place altogether. And it was quiet and calm and there was nothing now to disturb me, at least not yet, and rather than panicking like a fool, I decided to listen to my exhausted body and let it hang on the floor like a rag, and to listen to the sound of my mind and the blood pumping through my ears as the world behind my eyelids was dark and unclear and...peaceful. I hadn't felt this way in a long time. I never was a person of action, but rather a thinker, and come to think of it, it nevet got me very far. If you looked at people like that Potter boy, who wasn't a thinker at all, but whose actions had brought him very far, even to victory. But perhaps that is why, the boy never really interested me. There was nothing I could ever relate to him, and every act of his seemed reckless, even if it led to positive results at the end. I could even relate to Snape a little more than that. You often found yourself looking at the man and wondering, was he a thinker, or a man of action? Secretly, secretly, I admired him, because he was a little bit of both.
But speaking of Snape, where was he? I scrambled up from the floor and sat down miserably on the couch. Where the HELL was I? I knew thinking was just an excuse. I was terrible at acting, especially when I needed to. Utterly clueless as to what I was going to do next, I busied my mind to comfort myself that at least, I was doing something.
But this time thinking didn't seem to help at all. There were so many questions that were bursting to be answered, and that I knew I couldn't answer alone. All I knew right now, was that I was somewhere in an abandoned place, possibly in the presence of a Death Eater on the run.
I set out to explore. If this was going to be my temporary prison, then surely it was all at my disposal, and I was free to explore it. There wasn't much, however. It was small and dilapidated, and the lack if wizarding tools suggested it was a Muggle House. Right, that made sense. If Snape was on the run from the Ministry, an abandoned Muggle house would be the first place to hide. But why would he bring me along? Why hadn't he just left he at the Whomping Willow? And if he needed a hiding place, where was he? I touched the walls and felt the floor sqeak under me, feeling the life of the place, or rather, feeling the heaviness of its neglect. I touched without feeling, and looked without seeing. If there was a ghost in this place, I could have been easily mistaken for one.
Then all of a sudden, my hand broke contact with the wall, and I found myself staring at a vacant and dark hole to an adjoining room. I felt my fingers grow cold and the hairs on my neck rise when I realized that there was the potions master himself. I first caught sight of his foot still clad in his outside outfit. I dared not venture any further. Knowing his whereabouts made me all the more aware of my own movements. What if I wake him? And what if he is awake and finds me staring at him? Standing cautiously outside his door made me feel like a criminal, and feeling like I didn't have much choice, I peered carefully over the door frame. He was asleep. I dared poke my whole head through. He was slumped down on a metal bed, a hand just hanging on the edge, his long, pale fingers hanging limp. He looked like a man who had just fainted into the bed. I looked for any signs of movements, anything, a chest raising up or down, a deep breath, but nothing gave away that he was breathing. He looked exhausted and the pale face looked almost inhuman. The whole sight was disturbing, somehow. There I was staring at the mean Professor, a Death Eater, a murderer, and now as well, a kidnapper, at his most vulnerable state. Let him sleep, I thought, it's probably better that way. I moved away, using the opportunity to discover what I could.
There were only three windows in the entire house, all which were locked, blocking my way to outdoors. It felt strange, as if all of this had been planned beforehand, a house that had been boarded up and locked for exactly this purpose. As I paced slowly and half self-consciously, I couldn't help wondering how Snape had got hold of this house. My first thought was that he had probably killed an innocent Muggle, but something about the abandoned place suggested otherwise. It had been like this for a longer period of time, and Snape must have known about it before. Besides, last night, wasn't I as helpless and innocent as the Muggle Snape might have killed? And wasn't I still walking around, slightly bruised from my brawl from last night, but othwerwise, perfectly unscathed? I guess out of all the mysteries presented to me so far, this one had me confused the most. Why had Snape spared my life? After all thise crimes he had commited, he spared the life of a journalist. I was locked up in the same space as that murderer. In my eyes he was still a murderer, but nevertheless I discovered that there must be deeper layers to him that an outright cold-blooded killer.
It was needless to say, that even then, I wasn't seeking my answers from him, and I wasn't going to start thinking that just because he chose to preserve my life that I was out of harm's way. Whatever Snape had stuck up his sleeve, it was not good, and something told me that this time he was going to use me. This is why the need to escape had never left my mind. I had to use the Potions Master's vulnerability, and although I was a thinker, it didn't mean I couldn't be an actor too. However my thinking side had outweighed my acting side, and that's what made me hesitate. Wandless, I wasn't fit enough to act anyway. I needed a plan, and a smart one too.
And while I was snooping, it had dawned on me that my wand wasn't the only wand in the vicinity. The realization of it had hit me like a rock, and I cursed myself for my ignorance. How come I hadn't thought of that before? If I could get hold of Snape's wand somehow, I could also break free.
I crept back stealthily to the room where Snape slept. He hadn't budged at all, not even a hair on his head. I stood at the door, hesitating. Was it normal to be lying so still? I found it incredible that events from last night had exhausted him even more than they had exhausted me. For a man who was known to roam the Hogwarts corridors at night, this came as a bit shocking. Oh well.
I walked slowly to the place where I saw the wand resting on the table...right next to his head. This was it. I was finally acting, and I could have sworn I felt like my heart was about to swallow me whole. There was pounding in my ears and chest, up to the tips of my fingers, and I was starting to feel the chill of the prespiration in my shirtfront.Once I had reached the table, my toes starting to tingle under my weight, and hardly daring to breathe, I reached for the instrument on the table. First I touched it with one finger, then glancing at the Professor, I grasped it into my shaking hand. Oh God, I thought, it's so much bigger than mine. And heavier, somehow. I shuddered at the thought that this was the same wand that performed a killing curse. Never mind, I thought, trying to shrug it away, it's only for a second.
But Snape's incredibly still body triggered another sense in me, something that drew me forward, just to make sure he was still breathing. I moved in slowly, hesitating at every creak the floor made. I moved in closer and closer and laid my ear close to his face to try to hear some sign of breathing. There was such a faint breeze in my ear that I wasn't even sure if this just a figment of my imagination. I moved my head to his chest to try hear some sign of a heartbeat, or to see if it rose up and down. I took the wrist of his pale hand and felt it between my fingers. The pulse was so weak it was barely noticeable. I laid my head on his chest again and I could have sworn an eyelid fluttered just slightly.
"Hey," I said, snapping my fingers at his face. "Hey, wake up." I don't know why, but I felt an instinctive panic take over as I stared at the deathly pale and unresponsive face. "Please." I tapped him on his cheek, and then harder.
"Come on," I said, "Wake up." I wanted to shake him and I probably would have hadn't I noticed a dark patch of blood that was flowing from his neck, most of it already dried up.
"Oh shit," I gasped out loud, dropping the wand to the floor. "No, no, no, just not this please. Snape, come on, wake up." I started shaking him really hard, and tapping his face to get his attention. "Just don't sleep, just don't sleep," I said frantically. Because sleep was like death. And no matter how much I didn't like him, I couldn't just let him die here. But he was bleeding to death, and I cursed myself yet again, for not having seen it before.
Shaking him seemed to be having some effect, as Snape's eyes had finally opened halfway through. They were delirious with fever. "Professor," I said, still holding him on his shoulders lest he try to fall back asleep, "You're...um....bleeding." I tried to say it as a matter of factly without panic in my voice, but the Professor did not hear me. His mind was already drifting elsewhere. All he managed was a painful grunt before his eyes rolled in his head, and I felt him go limp.
"NO," I shrieked, shaking him mercilessly, "No, please tell me what to do!"
Snape had regained consciousness for a second once more and he seemed to be murmuring something and I leaned closer but all I heard was something like "Mmmh." His face was contorted in pain, and he was drifting away again. I had never felt so much panic as I did then, knowing I had a life in my hands, and that I was letting it drift away.
"Please, I don't know what to do!" I said to myself, more than to the professor. "I'm no doctor!" I had a wand, I guess. I snatched it up but I could not think of any spell that I could conjure that would heal wounds. Another example of how they teach nothing useful in school.
I needed to take him to the hospital. Right now. But how? I was locked up in a house in goodness knows where, god knows how far away from any living soul. I was all alone. I need to react, fast. Oh, if only the professor could tell me which type of potion would have been useful for this situation. I was at complete loss.
"Don't move," I told Snape, letting go off him, "I'm going to find something I could cover the wound with. Don't move."
Stupid, I thought. As if he was going to move anywhere. I rushed out of the room, and raced to find anything of use the little house.
I wasn't sure how I was going to heal him, but I was sure I would somehow. I had to.
It was hard to think that a few moments ago I was planning my escape and now my whole focus was on trying to save the Professor's life. Perhaps, I was a bit of an actor after all.