Severus smoothed the hair from Harry's face and applied another cooling charm to chase away the sweat that soaked him.
"You foolish boy," he scolded him lightly, secure in their privacy within the wolf and mutt's home. William had brought Harry straight there and placed him within the master bedroom, far away from the damaged bodies downstairs that were being tended to by the others.
William had always been the most intelligent and tolerable of the Weasley family.
Severus had followed as quickly as he could. He shoved Fleur Delacour from the room when he arrived, taking over care himself. Harry was suffering no physical ailments aside from a relatively minor head laceration. Severus assumed that Harry's mind had simply shut down to evade the draw of the dementors.
An act of kindness from the brain that was constantly defying Harry.
Harry's lips began moving, silently at first then more intelligible sounds.
"Fred…" he murmured. "Fred…"
Severus pulled open one of his eyelids, his curiosity overwhelming.
"Legilimens."
Severus slipped in Harry's mind as easily as he first had when Harry had been a first year.
"Fred!" Harry yelled. He ran across a graveyard to a body on the ground. The red hair was unmistakable, as were the deep cuts across the weakly moving chest. Harry dropped to his knees and held his hands above Frederick's torso.
"Heal," Harry demanded. "I want to heal Fred."
Severus watched as nothing happened and Harry screamed. Harry pressed his hands down directly on the wounds.
"I WANT TO HEAL FRED!"
Frederick's eyes opened and he stared directly at Harry after Harry's magic once again refused to heal the injuries.
"Harry…"
Harry's expression was as broken as Severus had ever seen it. He stared down at Frederick with a vulnerable lip trembling.
"I'm trying to heal you," Harry said. "I want you to be healed."
The boy's voice broke on the last word and Severus felt Harry's anguish as if it were his own.
Frederick reached up and traced a blood soaked thumb across Harry's cheek, leaving behind a morbid mark.
"This is your fault," Frederick whispered. He closed his eyes and without a sound, it was Susan Bones bleeding to death beneath Harry's hands.
"You never listen," she accused him.
Hermione Granger, "I thought you were powerful."
Harry wailed when Hermione changed to Trent Bailey.
"You can save the others, just die," the child whispered. "Die."
Severus watched himself appear beneath Harry's hands, a likely accurate memory of how he looked after dueling the Dark Lord in Harry's fourth year. Tears spilled from Harry's eyes and splashed on Severus' face.
"I should have left you on the streets," Severus whispered cruelly to the sobbing boy. "You are no son of mine."
Severus himself stepped forward, drawn toward where his child cried so brokenly.
"Harry," he called softly. Harry's face raised, misery etched on every line that should not mark the face of a seventeen year old. "This is not real, son. These people," he waved vaguely at where Severus had changed to Amelia Bones then Blaise Zabini, "they are not real."
Harry pressed down on the lacerations on Blaise's chest and shook his head despondently.
"Nothing ever is."
Severus removed himself from Harry's mind and frowned at the thrashing boy with the wet cheeks and fluttering lashes.
"Accio Dreamless Sleep," he murmured. As soon as the potion hit Severus' hand, he spelled it directly in Harry's system.
The effect was instantaneous and Severus felt his own chest loosen as Harry's breathing stuttered then evened out to a quiet pace. Severus pulled the covers up and smoothed the hair off his face once more.
The inner workings of Harry's mind were… incredibly tragic, truthfully.
Severus sat beside Harry's bed in a conjured chair and waited for Nymphadora to return to alert him to their successes. And, shockingly, it had been a successful mission. When Severus left, it had been with the last of the muggleborns who had been imprisoned within those terrible walls. He had not actually presumed that they would be successful when they first set out, yet Harry and his loyal band of magical misfits were nothing if not determined.
Fools, the lot of them.
It was mildly amusing to see Harry, the child so cold and larger than life, transform into a polar bear. Nymphadora owed Severus money it seemed, she had been confident that Harry would become a snake.
Severus knew that Harry would be something ridiculously large and impossible to miss in a room.
"Polar bear," Severus scoffed quietly and closed his eyes. "Ridiculous boy."
As peaceful as it was to relax and monitor Harry's sleep, it was not peace meant to last. Shortly after Severus spelled the potion in Harry, the wolf's patronus floated through the wall.
"Severus, we need you, quick." The wolf sounded frantic and it spurred Severus immediately to his feet. He cast a quick charm on Harry to alert him when he woke then moved quickly out the room and down the stairs.
The instant he opened the door, escaping his own silencing charm, it was clear that there had been a disaster.
People were crying, muffled sobs that struck dread in Severus' chest. Lupin was calmly ushering muggleborns in various states of healing away from the dining room where they had been triaging patients. Black was barking orders while Fleur was speaking rapid French to Narcissa.
It was selfish, but Severus never claimed to be a selfless person; the only thought he had as he moved quickly toward the room was that it was not Nymphadora who was causing that level of mayhem and heartbreaking cries.
Do not be Nymphadora…
Severus stepped in the room and his eyes were drawn to the body laid out on the table. The long body of a man newly finished with the growth spurts of youth. A body burnt nearly beyond recognition.
A body with a shock of red hair that dripped water at the head of the dining table where William, Charles, and Ronald Weasley were all standing with expressions of grief.
Harry's Frederick.
No.
"Move," Severus ordered them immediately. He pushed his sleeves up and moved beside where Narcissa was working. The Weasley siblings stepped away and Severus realized that the sound of devastation was coming from Charles who was being held up by William.
"No pulse," Narcissa said briskly. "I'm shocking again, nobody touch him."
Severus glanced quickly at Fleur, who was prepared to work despite her own red rimmed eyes.
"Get them out," he told her, referring to the Weasley's. "Now!"
Fleur moved immediately to usher the siblings from the room and Black filled Severus in while Narcissa sent a magical shock to the young man's heart and Severus began forcing air in his lungs and casting diagnostic spells.
"He was too close to the blast when the prison went up," Black said, his voice hoarse now that it was no longer a shout. "A chunk of the walls hit him in the chest and he fell from his broom before we could even try summoning him. He got caught in the flames then drug under the water by rubble. Fred jumped in after him and Bill and I had to go dig through the rubble to get them."
"Fred?" Severus' eyes snapped from the parchment he read to the hair that he had mistaken the owner of. "This is George?"
"Yes."
"Where's Fred?"
"He's hurt too, but Tonks and Remus have him in the kitchen."
Severus scanned the remainder of the report and shook his head.
"Black, have Lupin retrieve Molly," he said quietly. "Quickly."
If she had any desire to be with her son before he drew the last breath they would force in his body, she needed to arrive quickly.
Severus and Narcissa worked tirelessly for nearly an hour over George Weasley. The damage to his lungs and airway had been nearly irreparable; he must have inhaled in the flames that Black described, burning his tissue and destroying his esophagus.
It took all of Severus' mental acuities to keep his mental occlumency shields up as they placed George on a ventilator and Severus was reminded of Harry's last misfit who went on a ventilator and never left it.
"That's all we can do for now," Narcissa said once they had healed as much as they could. George's face, so like Severus' son-in-law's, was scarred in a way that had wrinkled and ruined his once freckled milky complexion.
George's heart was beating on its own, but it was a slow and sluggish pulse rate that his weakened and potion riddled body would struggle to compensate for. A mask covered his mouth with air being magically forced through to assist his lungs.
"He will likely never wake," Severus murmured quietly to Narcissa after running an updated scan on the young man. "The damage to his brain alone…"
Narcissa nodded and wiped the moisture pooling beneath her eyes with her thumb.
"Shall I fetch Molly?" she offered. "I believe I heard her arrive."
Severus grimaced. He too had heard the moment Molly Weasley had entered and her scream of horror at whatever condition Frederick had been in. Severus was begrudgingly grateful to Black when he restrained Molly from bursting in the room and interrupting Severus and Narcissa while they worked.
Severus eyed the condition of George Weasley with his shaved head and new scars and sighed with a nod.
"Yes," he told Narcissa. "You fetch Molly. I will return shortly to assess him."
Narcissa nodded and swept from the room. And, with a last light touch to George Weasley's cold cheek, Severus did the same thing.
Severus evaded the sitting room filled with Weasley's, wolves, and misfits as he deftly made his way back upstairs. It was no true surprise to find Frederick in bed with Harry, though the injuries Frederick sustained were.
Frederick lay in the bed, his arms wrapped protectively around Harry, and his face was as burnt as George had been. It looked as if someone, Nymphadora most likely, had applied a fresh layer of burn salve on his face, but the fresh trails of tears had left zigzagged patterns down his cheeks.
Both boys looked peaceful, despite Frederick's injuries, and Severus closed the door softly behind him when he left the room.
He conjured a chair and collapsed in it heavily directly outside the door.
If anyone wanted to bother the two young men who sacrificed so much to rescue a vulnerable and abused group of people - they could do so over Severus' dead body.
Severus closed his eyes and fell in a light and restless sleep that was punctured by the screams of anguish from a grieving mother.