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UnBroken	By : OddDoll Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Het - Male/Female Views: 6172 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
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Unbroken
By Odd Doll
Chapter 10
By five they hauled Severus out of the car and laid him out on the cheap, flowered bedspread of a budget motel. Sylvester left to get them something to eat, and Phoebe found herself alone with Severus. She sat beside him on the bed, watching him shiver, and wondered if they should wait to find a wizard or witch to heal him.
"Severus," she whispered, "are you awake?"
He turned to look at her but said nothing.
"We're running out of time. We're going to have to take you to Muggle doctors if we can't get you help soon."
He closed his eyes and let out what might have been an angry groan.
"Listen." She firmed her voice and sat up straighter. "I'm taking charge here. Do you understand? You may want to die, or maybe you just don't care, but until you're healthy enough to think clearly for yourself, I am making the decisions."
She crossed her arms and wondered if she should say anything to soften the blow. "Look, I'm not going to let you die, and that's that. Once you are on your feet again, you can jump off a bridge if you still really want to. Until then, no more running off on me. Understood?"
He just looked at her, squinting a little.
"I understand why you did it, and it was really noble and all, but don't do it again. You would have been better off -- we both would have been better off -- if you and I had split yesterday afternoon when I wanted to. That's my fault, and I apologize. No more loose cannons. You and I are going to put our heads together and get out of this mess."
At her feet lay the bag of supplies she had purchase at an all-night pharmacy. She dug into it until she found a thermometer.
"My dad had this thing about self-reliance and survival, so I learned first aid when I was a kid. Unfortunately, your situation goes a bit beyond that, but I'll do my best." She held out the thermometer she'd just unwrapped. "Now, open up and say 'ah.'"
Phoebe didn't know how dehydrated he was or how much blood he had lost, but she suspected that fluids would not hurt. In the bathroom she found a plastic cup and filled it with a sticky, orange liquid. She opened a bottle of painkillers and poured a few tablets in her hand.
"This stuff is what they give children when they've had diarrhea and need fluids," she said as she sat back down on the bed. "It's got some minerals and things, and I figure it can't hurt." She showed him the pills in her hand. "Pain killer and fever reducer all in one."
She drew the thermometer out of his mouth and read 103.2. "Okay."
"What is it?"
"Ah hah! You can speak," she said in a feeble attempt to lighten the situation. "103.2. You should be in a hospital. Here, drink up." With difficulty, she propped his head and shoulders up enough to get the liquid down his throat. "I should've bought some straws."
His head dropped back on the pillow. "Don't get too comfortable. I want that jacket off of you."
"I'm freezing."
"You have a fever. Jacket off. Shirt, too." She fought with the bloodstained jacket while he moaned and cursed once or twice. "You need to cool down. It's for your own good," she said when he called her a heartless bitch. "And I'll just pretend that your speech is so slurred that I can't understand a word you're saying."
Once his torso was bare, Phoebe turned her attention to the bloody bandage, which she had loosely re-wrapped around him after placing the spell on his incision. The area around the incision was swollen and red, and the skin felt hot when she placed her palm over it. A tiny drop of pus oozed from one corner.
"I'm not sure what to do about this," she said. "I'm not sure how you got it infected, and now that it is, I'm not sure what to do about it." She opened a bottle of alcohol and swabbed the skin. To take his mind off the discomfort of her ministrations, she told him about the events of earlier in the evening.
She was smearing antibiotic cream over the incision when she told him about the duel in the interview room. He groaned, not in pain, but in disgust.
"That was very stupid. She is not someone you want for an enemy."
"I didn't have a lot of options. She'd just attacked an Ello agent, and I had no wand. I didn't know if she intended to kill him, and I didn't want her taking me away to some place to question at her leisure." She placed a large adhesive bandage over the incision. "And what would you have done if you were her, and you'd just killed a Ministry agent, and there was an innocent, defenseless witch in the room?"
After a moment he said, "Kill the witch, say it was self-defense, and blame the other murder on her." His eyelids drooped and his voice was even more slurred.
"Before you nod off, promise me you won't run off until you can take care of yourself."
"I won't make any promises."
"I think I understand how you've survived up to now. You're a stubborn bastard, aren't you?"
"I try."
Phoebe watched him for a time, before getting a damp washcloth and wiping his face to cool it. She studied his features, and thought about how little she knew this man for whom she had risked her life. He must have been a very strong personality, she mused, to be able to spar with her in his present condition. And yet everything he said and did lacked a depth of feeling. It almost seemed to be out of habit, like a magical fire that burned unattended and without heat. She wondered if the spark would return with his health. Suddenly, she had the strongest urge to see it happen.
Phoebe knelt beside him on the bed so that her face was even with his.
"Severus," she said softly. He didn't move, so she said louder, "Severus, listen to me."
"You are no angel of mercy, are you?"
"I'm a dominatrix. I never claimed to be an angel. Now, listen. Do you want to live?"
"I want to go to sleep." He didn't open his eyes and his expression was blank.
"You were a lot nicer when you had your jaw wired shut."
"You weren't torturing me when my jaw was wired shut."
She crossed her arms, unwilling to give up. "Think, Severus. Deep down, do you want to live?" He opened his eyes now and looked at her, his expression almost puzzled. She didn't know if he was questioning his will to live or her motives for asking. "I know you've lost a lot, and endured a lot more. I can't even imagine what you've been through. Only you can answer this question. So ask yourself, do you want to give up or do you want to go on?"
"I want to live," he said tonelessly. "Now let me sleep."
For a moment she just watched him while she debated whether to press him further. He wanted to be left alone, that was all. Beyond that, she had no idea. Her frown deepened. I need to do something about this. But it wasn't the time for it. She sighed and left him to rest.
*****
Phoebe had just lain down beside him to get a bit of sleep herself, when Sylvester returned. She put a finger over her lips and sat up.
"I found a bakery that had just opened," he whispered, laying a white bakery box down on the faux wood top of the room's desk. "These are all fresh out of the oven. I didn't know how you like your coffee, so I brought two." He glanced over at Severus. "How's he doing?"
She shrugged. "I'm just not competent to judge. It seems bad to me, but maybe I'm just worrying." She peered into one of the coffees he set out for her and took a sip. "Thanks for the food. And everything. You're taking a terrible risk, you know, for two people you've never met before."
He blushed in a gracious show of humility so characteristic of his generation. "Like I said, it's worthwhile to me."
Phoebe took a pastry from the box and sat on the end of the bed. "I'd like to hear about that, but I imagine you would like to get some sleep."
He sat down in the wooden chair by the desk and said, "I don't think I could sleep now. I'm too nervous." He put a fingertip under the lid of the box and looked at the pastries without real interest.
"I know how you feel. This is all a bit unreal, isn't it?"
"Not for me. I've been living with this a lot longer than you."
He piqued her curiosity. "How is that so? Your witch and wizard children are involved?"
"Yes." He looked over at Severus. "They went to school with him, you know, although they were a bit older. Ravenclaw, both of them, which is supposed to mean they were intelligent, but I knew that. We had four children in all, and they were the middle two. They say it's very rare for two to come out of a Muggle family like that."
"There were six kids in my family, and I'm the only one."
"You come from Muggles, too?" He didn't wait for her to answer. "Sylvia and John were old enough to be in this fight against Voldemort both times. When they were younger, I don't suppose they did much, but this time around, they both got into it deep. It affected them more, you know, being 'mudbloods.'" He spat the word out as if it tasted bad. "John in particular kept himself busy transferring messages and doing who knows what. He was a newspaperman. Always had his nose in others' business and scribbling it down. One day he stuck his nose in the wrong place and got ugly green skulls over his house."
His eyes misted over and he had to clear his throat before he continued. "Beatrice and Little Johnnie were at Hogwarts, but they killed John, and Claire and baby Cecily. She was almost two. They weren't satisfied getting just John, they had to take his whole family. That's how they do it, you know. Like bloody terrorists."
"I suppose that's kind of what they are."
He pulled a large, white handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his eyes. "That was three years ago."
"I'm so sorry." She knew how useless her sentiments must be. "The two older children must have been his students."
"Yes, they were, and they were there when he got them out of Hogwarts back in '96. Sylvie had a son there, too. That's just one of the reasons why I'm here."
"Are your grandchildren back at Hogwarts now?"
"No, no. They go to regular schools, and Sylvie tries to teach them magic the best she can. Over two-thirds of the children didn't return to Hogwarts once the Dark Lord took over. A whole generation of British kids are not getting their proper education. And it will just make it easier for him in the future."
"I never thought about that. I guess that most of the kids that are attending there are either children of his followers or those who are too afraid to cause much of a resistance."
"Yes." He looked over to where Severus lay sleeping. "You know, the grandchildren all hated him. We would visit and ask about their schooling, and almost always they would come out with a story about some cruel or unfair thing he'd done to some poor child. I used to tell them to complain to the headmaster and tell him that he shouldn't be teaching children."
Phoebe looked at Severus's ruined face, wondering even more what sort of man she had befriended.
"Is your daughter your source?" She immediately regretted the question. "No, don't tell me."
"It's probably best if I don't."
"So, did you start getting involved with this when your son was killed?"
"No, not at first." He sighed and drank some coffee before continuing. "About a year or more ago, one of Sylvia's school friends was killed. This one was from a wizarding family, but Janie was always a good friend. To all of us. She would come and visit for weeks at a time in the summer. So Shirley and I went to the funeral as well. There were two more Muggles there, parents of another school friend. The four of us were astonished to find that wizards don't use pallbearers for the coffins of their dead. They levitate them. It just seemed so cold and heartless not to bear your family to their grave with your own hands. So the four of us insisted on carrying it ourselves." He made a little chagrined smile. "Made a little scene, we did. Had those witches and wizards muttering amongst themselves, but in the end a few stepped in to help us.
"Anyway, the four of us got to talking about how helpless we feel about this whole war. All those Muggle-born witches and wizards are getting killed, more than anybody else. And it's the Muggle families that have to pick up the pieces and take care of the orphans." His face hardened. "But there's nothing we can do to get justice."
Phoebe thought about what her family would do if she were killed. It suddenly struck home that it was now a real possibility. Her brained buzzed with a swarm of unfinished tasks: her will, the trust she had planned. She would have to deal with them moment she returned to the States. If she got back. She stared into her coffee, watching it swirl a little in the cup like the swirling thoughts in her head. Her predicament was too big to face. She put down the rest of her pastry, her appetite gone.
"If something were to happen to me, because of Voldemort, my father and brothers would go crazy if they couldn't get some kind of satisfaction."
"Well, I wouldn't say I went that far, but I was outraged. After that funeral, the four of us started getting together and talking. And we found more parents and family like us who were left behind with no recourse, and then we started looking for more. We didn't know exactly what we were planning to do, but we would get together and talk. Trying to find answers."
"At first we just started going to funerals to contact people, and we served as pallbearers sometimes if they would let us. It became symbolic to us, taking up the burdens of the dead. We started calling our little group 'The Pall Bearers.'"
"That's morbid."
"Yes, well, it's a morbid situation, isn't it?"
"Very."
"We've stopped doing it now, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves, but we do still follow the obituaries. So, anyway, after a while we started noticing things. For example, the magical folk never paid any attention to us. It was almost as if we were invisible to them. And they talked to us in a condescending way, like we were half-wits, or children. Well, some of them did, but even the nice ones dismissed us after a bit. So, we got to thinking. There's a lot more of us than them, and here is this whole body of people that they pay no attention to, that can blend into the background. Now doesn't that sound like a perfect army of spies?"
Phoebe thought about it for a moment. "I suppose you could carry messages and do errands and things." She warmed up to the idea. "And maybe do surveillance, if someone taught you what to look for. There would be a lot you couldn't do, though. You could never penetrate magical security, and I doubt you could get close to many witches or wizards."
Sylvester nodded. "Right. But we are more hands and eyes and arms and legs to help. And we want it badly."
"What you need is someone in the magical world who can appreciate what you have to offer and can find the right ways to use you."
"Exactly." He leaned forward a bit in his chair, his enthusiasm growing. "My...uh...contact can get a bit of information here and there, but is not in any position to really organize. She's not the kind of person that people will follow, anyway. But I know there are more like her out there." He slumped a little. "Since that Dumbledore disappeared the heart has gone out of any resistance that there was. There are people out there who want to do something, but they're very afraid. They don't know who to trust with their ideas and information."
"You need Dumbledore back. Or someone to replace him."
He looked down at Severus. "Yes,"
Phoebe glanced over her shoulder at the figure lying prone on the bed. "Him?"
Sylvester nodded, but frowned, too. "Maybe. We passed some names back and forth, but of course he was missing at the time and presumed dead, so not much serious consideration was given him. People really hated him, too. It seems that half the wizards alive either went to school with him and thought he was a creep, or were his students and thought he was a sadistic bully. Them that don't are mostly in Voldemort's camp." He drained his coffee and threw the paper cup in the trash. "Still, he's famous and something of a hero. He might be able to pull people together, and that might be all we need."
Phoebe stood and threw her cup in the trash as well. Rays of light had crept in through the crack in the curtains while they talked. A glance at her watch told her it was 6:30.
"Well, let's have another look at his temperature."
"You might try rubbing him down with the alcohol instead of water," Sylvester said as she placed the thermometer under his tongue. He was sound asleep, and she had to hold it in place.
"That's a good idea. Do you want to sleep now? You can have the other bed."
"What time should we get going?"
"I was thinking that I would go to a wizarding pharmacy and get a few things. I don't know if our potions are any better than yours, but he'd appreciate it."
Sylvester sat down on the room's second double bed and said, "Well, maybe I'll get an hour or so."
She read the thermometer with a little sigh of relief. "One oh two point seven. Still bad, but going in the right direction." She wiped it down with alcohol and laid it on the nightstand. "I think I'll take a shower to wake me up, and then be off to Diagon Alley."
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