Diane (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dianehc) wrote,@ 2006-11-22 16:47:00 |
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Falling Stars, Part 7
Title: Falling Stars
Rating: PG, Angst
Summary: The war's finished, the good guys won, and it's time to live. Wouldn’t it be lovely if that were true?
Falling Stars, Part 7
After a second, bizarre but remarkable, display of young man’s healing abilities Juliette watched as her husband and daughter slipped into unconsciousness. The young man that her husband had been referring to as Longbottom stepped forward ran his wand over their throats, temples, hearts, and lower abdomens. Within moments, his tight concerned expression softened and he looked up at her comfortably.
“It looks like they will recover just fine. What do you think, Hare?”
“Yeah, I cleared it all. She had a lot more than he did, but I didn’t let go until I was sure the poison was out of both of their systems. As long as it didn’t cause any other damage, it should be okay.” Mr. Potter turned reassuringly to her and swayed as he nodded.
“Harry!” The young… healer, judging by his familiarity with healing spells and techniques jumped forward and caught his friend.
“Don’t quite feel quite right, Nev.”
“You better take it easy. I don’t think you’ve done two of those in a row before, much less on two people at a time.”
“Yeah… guess so,” he mumbled blearily.
“Think I’ll crash for a while. Kay?”
“Sure, Hare; You do that. I’ll wake you before I go.”
“Mmhmm, Thanks.”
“Mr. Longbottom, can I offer you some tea?” Juliette offered for lack of a better tack to get the conversation back to where she wanted it to go. She had seen Severus’s face when the young man had rapidly assessed the situation, and judging by her husband’s expression, had come up with an answer that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. While she knew that Severus wasn’t going to press charges against his daughter for the poisoning, Juliette was afraid that the young man would still report the girl, which would undoubtedly lead the Ministry to question the presumed Death Eater attack on Snape Manor.
“Yes, Thank you, Ma’am.”
Turning to the dining table, Juliette paused as she stared at the full tea service that Mr. Potter had set out for her and her husband’s return.
“May I ask you a question, Mr. Longbottom?”
“Neville, if you would, and certainly, I will be happy to answer what ever I can.”
“Thank you, Neville. May I ask why, when your friend had the tea set up out here, did he retire to the kitchen to make himself tea? The pot is clearly charmed to stay warm and he certainly wouldn’t have expected us to sit down for a bite after this.” She waved her hand in a half-circle toward her husband and child to indicate their emergency.
“Oh, well that. We didn’t want the professor to see Harry pouring the poison into his cup. It would have been quite dangerous for his heart rate to speed up and he has a tendency to react strongly to Harry’s penchant for risking his life to save others.”
“H-he took the poison?” Juliette turned back to stare at the boy who was now sprawled across the couch shivering and used a bit of wandless magic to cover him with a wool throw from a nearby chair.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose that I was to… emotional to fully explain earlier. To use one of his ‘bursts’, he has to simulate or duplicate the type of abuse that he experienced that caused those symptoms: to help them breath, I had to fool his body into believing that he was being choked. But, with poison, it’s not quite enough to take him close to being poisoned with similar potions, somehow his magic has to address the exact toxin that was being used. So, to pull it out of their systems, he had to take it himself.”
“I see.” It sounded logical enough if a bit depressingly self-sacrificial. “But, why not just explain that to Severus? He would not have panicked.”
“No, I know that. We’ve seen enough to know that, but Ma’am, the poison used dragon’s blood, and that’s a different matter entirely.”
Her dimming pallor told him that she knew enough about potions that she would understand his explanation.
“Magically, it’s a sentience-sensitive material; or rather, it reacts to the sentience of the person it’s being used on. If the patient knows that it’s being used, that knowledge triggers a currently unexplainable effect, and the effects of the dragon’s blood multiply sometimes as much as ten-fold, depending on what it was blended with. The strongest effects correlate with an individual’s advanced knowledge of the dragon’s blood effects.”
“For Severus, then…”
“The amount of poison that he may have ingested… given a two hour period and a potion master’s knowledge? Yes, it would have been undoubtedly been fatal before we could have counteracted its effects. As it was, I wasn’t certain that he wouldn’t recognize it, but hoped that his concern for …” Longbottom paused to glance over at Celeste with an appraising glance, before he continued: “his daughter? … would distract him from examining it to closely.
“How very Slytherin of you,” Severus rasped archly.
Both Juliette and Neville jumped nervously.
“Professor!” Longbottom exclaimed rushing to her husband’s. “How are you feeling?”
“Considering that I’ve just recovered from dragon’s blood poisoning, remarkably well, but tell me (if you will?) how exactly did get around Potter’s knowledge of the effects?”
“What?!? Harry doesn’t know the effects. He was almost as bad as me in potions, and he’s never really been a Hermione type of student to look outside of the minimum needed to complete an assignment. I’m sure he read about Dragon’s blood for NEWT potions, but that was years ago and he didn’t even pass that.”
Juliette marveled at her husband’s patience; in some ways, he was so different than the brash unforgiving young professor that she had fallen in love with. Their years apart had obviously tempered him while it only seemed to have aged her.
“Professor Longbottom, need I remind you that you are currently the Potions instructor at Hogwarts? Or further, that the sole reason that Mr. Potter did not pass his NEWT exams was yet another unfortunate vision? Or perhaps something more direct to the issue at hand, surely, by this time you have put some thought into who created the inventive crossbow bolts that were used during the surprisingly successful attempt to retrieve us from Bellatrix Lestrange’s hospitality?”
“Dumbledore… I thought Dumbledore.”
Whatever her husband might have said to this was sidetracked by Juliette’s sudden sarcastic comment, “That old man, dear as he was, using crossbow bolts? Ridiculous? Did you even know the man? Certainly, he was an alchemist, but so tradition bound that I don’t imagine that he could have even thought up a combination with a muggle weapon.”
Apparently recognizing the validity of her comment, Longbottom gazed palely at her, unaware that the teacup trembling in his grasp, then flashed an anxious pleading look towards her husband before letting the tea cup slip from his grip and dashing to his friend’s side.
“No, oh no. Harry, wake up. Wake up, Hare. Can you hear me? Come on Hare wake up!”
After almost throwing his wand back and forth across his friends body as he murmured the diagnostic spell, Longbottom hesitated before pulling the wand back to him to read the energy patterns now scrolling across its surface, then steeled himself, read it, and muttered a long virulent stream of biting profanities.
Title: Falling Stars
Rating: PG, Angst
Summary: The war's finished, the good guys won, and it's time to live. Wouldn’t it be lovely if that were true?
Falling Stars, Part 7
After a second, bizarre but remarkable, display of young man’s healing abilities Juliette watched as her husband and daughter slipped into unconsciousness. The young man that her husband had been referring to as Longbottom stepped forward ran his wand over their throats, temples, hearts, and lower abdomens. Within moments, his tight concerned expression softened and he looked up at her comfortably.
“It looks like they will recover just fine. What do you think, Hare?”
“Yeah, I cleared it all. She had a lot more than he did, but I didn’t let go until I was sure the poison was out of both of their systems. As long as it didn’t cause any other damage, it should be okay.” Mr. Potter turned reassuringly to her and swayed as he nodded.
“Harry!” The young… healer, judging by his familiarity with healing spells and techniques jumped forward and caught his friend.
“Don’t quite feel quite right, Nev.”
“You better take it easy. I don’t think you’ve done two of those in a row before, much less on two people at a time.”
“Yeah… guess so,” he mumbled blearily.
“Think I’ll crash for a while. Kay?”
“Sure, Hare; You do that. I’ll wake you before I go.”
“Mmhmm, Thanks.”
“Mr. Longbottom, can I offer you some tea?” Juliette offered for lack of a better tack to get the conversation back to where she wanted it to go. She had seen Severus’s face when the young man had rapidly assessed the situation, and judging by her husband’s expression, had come up with an answer that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. While she knew that Severus wasn’t going to press charges against his daughter for the poisoning, Juliette was afraid that the young man would still report the girl, which would undoubtedly lead the Ministry to question the presumed Death Eater attack on Snape Manor.
“Yes, Thank you, Ma’am.”
Turning to the dining table, Juliette paused as she stared at the full tea service that Mr. Potter had set out for her and her husband’s return.
“May I ask you a question, Mr. Longbottom?”
“Neville, if you would, and certainly, I will be happy to answer what ever I can.”
“Thank you, Neville. May I ask why, when your friend had the tea set up out here, did he retire to the kitchen to make himself tea? The pot is clearly charmed to stay warm and he certainly wouldn’t have expected us to sit down for a bite after this.” She waved her hand in a half-circle toward her husband and child to indicate their emergency.
“Oh, well that. We didn’t want the professor to see Harry pouring the poison into his cup. It would have been quite dangerous for his heart rate to speed up and he has a tendency to react strongly to Harry’s penchant for risking his life to save others.”
“H-he took the poison?” Juliette turned back to stare at the boy who was now sprawled across the couch shivering and used a bit of wandless magic to cover him with a wool throw from a nearby chair.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose that I was to… emotional to fully explain earlier. To use one of his ‘bursts’, he has to simulate or duplicate the type of abuse that he experienced that caused those symptoms: to help them breath, I had to fool his body into believing that he was being choked. But, with poison, it’s not quite enough to take him close to being poisoned with similar potions, somehow his magic has to address the exact toxin that was being used. So, to pull it out of their systems, he had to take it himself.”
“I see.” It sounded logical enough if a bit depressingly self-sacrificial. “But, why not just explain that to Severus? He would not have panicked.”
“No, I know that. We’ve seen enough to know that, but Ma’am, the poison used dragon’s blood, and that’s a different matter entirely.”
Her dimming pallor told him that she knew enough about potions that she would understand his explanation.
“Magically, it’s a sentience-sensitive material; or rather, it reacts to the sentience of the person it’s being used on. If the patient knows that it’s being used, that knowledge triggers a currently unexplainable effect, and the effects of the dragon’s blood multiply sometimes as much as ten-fold, depending on what it was blended with. The strongest effects correlate with an individual’s advanced knowledge of the dragon’s blood effects.”
“For Severus, then…”
“The amount of poison that he may have ingested… given a two hour period and a potion master’s knowledge? Yes, it would have been undoubtedly been fatal before we could have counteracted its effects. As it was, I wasn’t certain that he wouldn’t recognize it, but hoped that his concern for …” Longbottom paused to glance over at Celeste with an appraising glance, before he continued: “his daughter? … would distract him from examining it to closely.
“How very Slytherin of you,” Severus rasped archly.
Both Juliette and Neville jumped nervously.
“Professor!” Longbottom exclaimed rushing to her husband’s. “How are you feeling?”
“Considering that I’ve just recovered from dragon’s blood poisoning, remarkably well, but tell me (if you will?) how exactly did get around Potter’s knowledge of the effects?”
“What?!? Harry doesn’t know the effects. He was almost as bad as me in potions, and he’s never really been a Hermione type of student to look outside of the minimum needed to complete an assignment. I’m sure he read about Dragon’s blood for NEWT potions, but that was years ago and he didn’t even pass that.”
Juliette marveled at her husband’s patience; in some ways, he was so different than the brash unforgiving young professor that she had fallen in love with. Their years apart had obviously tempered him while it only seemed to have aged her.
“Professor Longbottom, need I remind you that you are currently the Potions instructor at Hogwarts? Or further, that the sole reason that Mr. Potter did not pass his NEWT exams was yet another unfortunate vision? Or perhaps something more direct to the issue at hand, surely, by this time you have put some thought into who created the inventive crossbow bolts that were used during the surprisingly successful attempt to retrieve us from Bellatrix Lestrange’s hospitality?”
“Dumbledore… I thought Dumbledore.”
Whatever her husband might have said to this was sidetracked by Juliette’s sudden sarcastic comment, “That old man, dear as he was, using crossbow bolts? Ridiculous? Did you even know the man? Certainly, he was an alchemist, but so tradition bound that I don’t imagine that he could have even thought up a combination with a muggle weapon.”
Apparently recognizing the validity of her comment, Longbottom gazed palely at her, unaware that the teacup trembling in his grasp, then flashed an anxious pleading look towards her husband before letting the tea cup slip from his grip and dashing to his friend’s side.
“No, oh no. Harry, wake up. Wake up, Hare. Can you hear me? Come on Hare wake up!”
After almost throwing his wand back and forth across his friends body as he murmured the diagnostic spell, Longbottom hesitated before pulling the wand back to him to read the energy patterns now scrolling across its surface, then steeled himself, read it, and muttered a long virulent stream of biting profanities.
