Better Be Slytherin!

But Potter was waiting -- as was the Bloody Baron -- and Severus put out his hand. 'Give me your wand.'

Potter hesitated, then reached into a pocket and pulled out eleven inches of holly. Severus wrapped his potion stained fingers around it, but Potter did not let go until Severus lifted an eyebrow in his general direction. The boy dropped his end of the wand with a scowl.

'Clean this up, then come and sit there,' Severus said and pointed at the nearest chair. He prepared his mind for the spellwork while the boy cleared up the rest of the unsliced murtlap, covered the vat and cleaned his knives and the table expertly before returning to sit down. 'Now. Look me in the eyes, Potter, and continue to do so. I am going to search for your memories of that night. First, I'll attempt to reverse the Obliviate, and if that doesn't do it, I'll use Legilimency to go into your mind and look for the memories and perhaps draw them forward. Do you understand?'

'No.' The boy gave him a rueful smile. 'But it's kind of above my level, so I'm not likely to, am I?'

'Not really,' Severus admitted, once more impressed with Potter's readiness to proceed anyway.

'I'm ready,' he said, bracing his arms on the table.

Severus very much doubted that was really the case, but he would take what he could get. 'Try and relax, but keep your eyes open as much as possible, if you would. This may . . . feel a bit strange.' The boy nodded, and held his gaze, and Severus had no further reason to delay. 'Restutio Facultas.'

Piecing back together a memory after it had been Obliviated was never easy, and was not always possible. Using the original wand made success far likelier. A willing subject, even more so. All the same, Severus had always likened the process to simultaneously preparing a hundred minutely different potions, each with a series of overlapping instructions. He had to grab each ingredient by touch, add it at the right time to the right potion, and move on to the next cauldron fast enough to keep them all going. There was no room for error.

Likewise, inside the boy's mind, he had to grab this image, that gesture, this reflection of light, and that fraction of sound, all with a similar magical signature to them which denoted their attachment to a particular specific Obliviated memory, and then assemble them in order, at the right time, so the memory flowed into a cohesive whole. Error could mean anything from erasing more memories, to causing the mind to be stuck in the one memory being restored, running on a loop through it, forever, to a virtual lobotomization of the subject's mind.

It was exhausting and laborious work, and yet, when it worked, the end result was very satisfying. Throughout, the temptation was there to explore others of Potter's memories while he had been given unfettered access, but he did not actually have the time or energy for such liberty, and kept his focus on repairing the Baron's handiwork.

Breathing heavy and with a headache a mile long when he withdrew at last from the boy's mind and dropped the spell, Severus loosened his grip on the holly wand. His hands had grown cramped around it; his nails a pale blue.

And Potter . . . Potter was slumped back in the chair, slack jawed and looking for all the world like Severus had rendered him completely mindless. A thread of drool ran from the corner of his mouth.

Damn!

Severus rushed toward him, and lifted one of his bruised looking eyelids, then the other, finding his pupils dilated, but still responsive. He reached for a pulse and said, 'Potter. Harry! Can you hear me?' as the boy's throat swallowed reflexively against his fingers. Say something, damn you.

The muttered, 'Hurts,' was likely the best word he'd ever heard.

'I imagine so,' Severus murmured. 'It will get better.' Though he had tried to be gentle, due to Potter's age if nothing else, the procedure, in his own experience of being on the other end, was not unlike like having very sharp razors applied to one's brain, slicing bits off here and there before they were glued back together.

'Accio Solamen Venenum,' he said and held out the hand that had been lifting eyelids and pulse checking. He caught the pain relief potion easily, uncorked it with his thumb and index finger and held it to Potter's lips. 'Drink this.'

'Wazzit?' he asked, turning his head away.

'A potion for the pain, Mr. Potter. I assure you, I do not have poisoning you on today's itinerary.'

'Like the frogs,' the boy said, and Severus frowned. Had he messed up after all?

'No, like a pain potion,' he said. 'Now drink it, and then we'll have a chat,' unless I have inadvertently thrown a Flagrante Curse into the middle of your ability to reason and form sentences.

Potter's face screwed up, but he let the potion bottle come to his lips this time, and even drank it all down. Severus waited a few minutes, for it to take affect. At one point, feeling a set of judgmental eyes surveying him, he glared at the Bloody Baron. If not for his bloody Obliviate, this would have been far simpler. The Baron merely leant -- rather casually, and in obvious disregard for laws of ectoplasmic beings -- against the wall nearest the door, his face as blank as Severus on his best days. His eyes, though . . . haunted didn't begin to describe it.

Finally, the boy in the chair straightened up, though he rubbed his hand across his scar a few times as if it pained him, and his eyes were squinting more than usual behind his ill fitting glasses.

'Better?'

'Yessir,' Potter said, slurring the words a little, still.

'Do you remember your name?'

'Bo . . . Harry Potter, sir.'

What had he been about to say? 'And do you remember where you are?'

Potter scrubbed his eyes with his fingers and nodded. 'Classroom. Dungeons.'

'That's right. Now, do you remember what we were just doing, you, the Bloody Baron and I?'