Chapter 10: Bring Me To Life

Unfortunately, they did not speak of it the next day, or on any day soon after. Severus, who had long prided himself on his icy-cool and calm demeanour, was intensely dismayed to find that he could not summon the courage to try to tell her again. And Geillis, not wishing to send her friend into one of his all-too-frequent bad moods, never mentioned those moments in her sitting room.

***

It landed in front of her, narrowly missing her tea.

The post had come that morning, and for once there had been a package for Geillis. On closer inspection, the return address proved to be Julius’. She smiled slightly. It was the anniversary of Nathan’s death. Perhaps Julius, knowing this, had sent her something in an attempt to cheer her. Dear Julius! He was a little strange, but he had a good heart.

She took the packet into her office and placed it on the desk. Should she open it now, or should she save it for tonight? It wasn’t as if she was going to be doing anything else that night; she had made up all her lesson plans for the next two weeks already, and her students had no assignments due until next Tuesday.

But then--Geillis was curious, and she still had a few minutes left before she had to head down to her classroom.

Should she wait, or should she give in to her curiosity?

Curiosity won the day. She untied the string, unwrapped the paper, and opened the small box.

Only her reflexes stopped the dart from shooting into her heart. Instead, it lodged deeply in her left arm. She was immediately nearly blinded with pain.

That can’t be from Julius, she thought fuzzily. It must have hit a nerve. I really should get some help with this... Unfortunately, this was her last coherent thought before the pain caused her to black out.

***

The students sat in Geillis’ classroom, wondering where their teacher was. It wasn’t like Professor Gaerwing to be late!

“Where could she be?” wondered Hermione Granger, fidgeting in her chair. She had heard a rumour that Professor Gaerwing had planned a surprise quiz for the day, and so had been studying every chance she had since breakfast.

“Who cares?” This was from a sullen Hufflepuff who had recently earned a “D” on an assignment, and was thus unhappy with the Songspells teacher for the time being.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to find her,” said Hermione. “She’d have let us know if she were going to cancel the class today.” She stood up.

“Hermione, no!” said Harry. “If Filch catches you in the hall--”

“I should think that he would understand if he found out that Professor Gaerwing’s not here,” she said.

Harry and Ron shared a look. “Then we’re going with you,” Harry said.

Hermione nodded, and the three ran up to Geillis’ office. They knocked on their teacher’s harp-door, but there was no answer. They tried again, and--

“What was that?” asked Ron.

“It sounded like a groan,” said Harry.

“Dumbledore’s office--now!” Hermione rushed away, and the boys followed her.

They knocked on his office door. “Enter,” said the Headmaster.

He looked at the three children who now stood before him. “Shouldn’t you be in class now?” he asked. “I’m sure that Professor Gaerwing would be quite disappointed that you three are missing her class.”

“Well, yes, sir, but--we came to tell you that she hasn’t shown up yet, and we’re getting a bit worried.”

Dumbledore looked at her, puzzled. “Would you care to explain this, Miss Granger?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “You see, we were waiting for her for ten minutes when some of the others started to get nervous. The three of us went to her office and knocked on the door. There was no answer the first time, but the second time we heard a groan.”

“A groan?”

“Yes a groan,” said Harry. “I heard it clearly. Whoever it was couldn’t have been far off.”

Dumbledore rose. “This could be serious,” he said. “Go and tell your classmates to return to their Houses. I shall go and investigate this myself.”

The children left, and Dumbledore hurried to Geillis’ office. He spoke her latest password--Merlin only knew how she had come up with something so odd--and the door slid open. “Geillis?” he said, looking around.

He found her behind her desk, still and silent as death. In her arm was a dart, deeply embedded. The wound wasn’t bleeding much, but he could see that this was because the dart itself was keeping the flow of blood at bay.

He rushed her over to the hospital wing. “Poppy!” he shouted.

“Headmaster, what--”

Dumbledore quickly told her what he knew. Madam Pomfrey felt Geillis’ forehead and checked her pulse. “I need to work fast,” she said. “Put her in the private room, and go get Severus. It’s a bit early to know for sure, but I think she may have been poisoned.”

***

Snape blew into the infirmary. “I came here as soon as I could,” he said. “What’s happened?”

After the story had been repeated yet again, he thought for a moment. “Has the dart been removed yet?” he asked slowly.

“Yes, said Pomfrey. “Given our suspicion that she has been poisoned, the removal seemed to be the best idea. I kept it in case you wanted to see it.”

“I will have to take it to my laboratory,” he said. “Before I can give her an antidote, I need to know which poison it is.”

“But wouldn’t a bezoar--”

“No,” he interrupted her. “It is merely effective against most poisons. There are some which it will not affect. It could even cause harm, in some cases. I don’t want to take a chance.”

“Then hurry, Severus,” said Poppy. “I’ve slowed her heart so that the poison won’t spread as quickly, but by the time she was found, a significant amount of damage had been done.”

Snape’s face tightened. He whirled about and hurried to his laboratory as quickly as his feet could carry him.

Damn these anti-apparition wards!

***

Ten minutes later, Severus Snape sat at his desk, his head in his hands. It was hopeless! If there was a cure, he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t even identify the poison; he had never seen its like before. But surely there was something he could do! He was a wizard, for Merlin’s sake!

A vague memory from his student days stirred. There was a spell he’d learned, but never expected to use--it was called Extractus Toxinus. He had nearly forgotten it; he had learned it in his seventh year, and had already known that he would be made a Death Eater soon after his graduation. Back then, he had believed that if he came across anyone who had been poisoned it would be because he wanted them to be.

It was a million-to-one chance, but it just might work. Snape had never been much for the Pratchett theory of odds, but he was desperate. Given the amount of time that had elapsed since Geillis had been poisoned, it might be the only option. It was certainly the only one he could think of.

He left his chambers quickly. To do the spell, he needed something which belonged to her. With this in mind, he hurried up to her office.

Blast! What was that password again? Something about a singing dog…

Oh, right. “Decanine cantoris!” he said, and the door slid open.

He stepped into her office, looking for something with which to aid the spell to draw out the poison. It would have to be something which she owned, but preferably something which could be spared…

His eyes rested on a grey handkerchief which lay on the desk. Perfect! She certainly carried it with her often enough--Geillis was never without a handkerchief--but there wasn’t much of a difference between one of her handkerchiefs and the rest of them. If it were destroyed, she wouldn’t miss it.

He grabbed the handkerchief and hurried back to the hospital wing.

***

Five minutes later, he sat alone at her bedside, murmuring the incantation over and over again. In his left hand, he held the handkerchief. In his right, he held his wand. The spell seemed to be having some effect; some colour was returning to her unnaturally pale face. Occasionally, she groaned--not surprising, as the spell was generally quite painful. He could only be thankful that she was already unconscious, and that she trusted him. Somehow, that always lessened the pain of the spell.

Ha! Fancy that. She trusted him, he who had done so many terrible things, who had been so many terrible things--he wished he could tell her that there were few people in the world who she should trust less, especially since she knew of his Death Eater past…

Get your mind back on the task at hand, you idiot!

He murmured the incantation over and over again. It was getting hypnotic. Just as he was about to fall into a trance, he noticed that the power had stopped flowing. He tried not to panic. It didn’t necessarily mean that she was dead. It could simply mean that all of the poison was gone. Whatever had happened, there was no longer any need for it.

“Geillis?” he asked, hesitantly.

No answer.

“Geillis?”

Still no answer.

He picked up her hand; it was cold. Her face had gone pale again. She wasn’t breathing.

“Bugger!”

There was no time for thought. Fortunately, he had taken a Muggle first-aid course once, after Dumbledore had pointed out that sometimes magical medical help was impossible. Without thinking of the hours of consternation that it would later cause him, he lowered his mouth to hers and started to perform artificial respiration. Damn it, Geillis, BREATHE!

He didn't know how long he sat there breathing into his co-worker's lungs, and he was starting to feel a little lightheaded. You can't stop now! he thought frantically, willing himself to go on a bit longer.

I can't do it. It's too much. I'm going to lose consciousness myself any moment now.

Just as he thought he could do no more, he felt something different under his mouth. Resistance? He let go of her nose and looked. She was breathing again.

Thank whatever Gods, Goddesses, or other Deities that be…

Whoa, lad. Why are you so relieved? Does she really mean that much to you?

It was then that Severus Snape realized that he might have a problem.

***

Geillis lay floating in darkness. It was quite comfortable here, really. She couldn’t stay here forever, but for now, it was all right.

She was quite aware that she was dying. Somehow, her connection to her body was still strong enough that she could feel some of the pain of the Extractus Toxinus spell that someone--Severus?--was using to remove the poison. Sometimes she felt drawn closer to it, and other times she felt like she was being pushed away. It must have been an effect of the pain. At least that wasn’t as unbearable as it might have been. Being this far away from her body had its advantages.

A light appeared, as if at the end of a tunnel. Was this--yes, this was the famous light. She found herself feeling calm, dispassionate, neutral. What was the point in being upset? She knew she was going to see it someday, anyway, though she hadn’t expected that she would see it so soon. A sense of peace began to envelop her.

Sashara Elford Bonosares…

It seemed to her that she saw her husband’s face again, just for a second, before she was yanked back into her body.

***

It was about a week before she was able to return to the classroom again. By the end of the fourth day, she felt reasonably like herself, but Poppy wouldn’t let her leave the infirmary. On the second day, she had been able to speak again, and she’d asked what had happened; she had received a long and slightly confused account of everything from Dumbledore, Poppy, and Snape. The last of these, looking slightly uncomfortable, had apologized for the loss of her handkerchief and replaced it with a new one; she had forgiven him, as it had been necessary to save her life. However much she still wanted to be with Nathan again, she still did not want Codanna to win.

She had no idea why Severus would be so uncomfortable talking to her. In the end, she simply dismissed it as being a reaction to the need to apologize. After all, he wasn’t precisely the sort of person who spent much time apologizing, and he would certainly be unsure about how to go about it.

***

A/N: Looks like this Author’s Note is going to be a bit shorter than the last few have been. =)

Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life” is one of my favourite songs, and I thought that it would be appropriate for the title of this chapter, for obvious reasons.

I’m rather ashamed to admit that the dart comes from a tasteless rhyme I learned in grade one. One kid would say to another “I’m telling on you!” and of course, the other kid would ask why. The answer would always be either “You put a dart in my heart and made me fart all the way to K-Mart!” or “You put ants in my pants and made me dance all the way to France!”

When I first wrote the story, I had no intention of ever posting it; I later decided to post it (first on fanfiction.net and then here) to see if anyone had any suggestions for improvement to my writing. Therefore, I borrowed the Extractus Toxinus spell from a one of my favourite fanfics on ff.net. It’s called “Yet Another Snape Meets the Dursleys Story”, by rabbit and ~v~jinx~v~. Unfortunately, it seems that it has been abandoned; in my opinion, that’s a real shame. It might have been interesting to see how that story ended.

“It was a million-to-one chance, but it just might work. Snape had never been much for the Pratchett theory of odds, but he was desperate.” This “theory” is taken from “Guards! Guards!” by Terry Pratchett, in a scene where Sgt. Colon, (then) Lance-Constable Carrot, and Cpl. Nobby Nobbs try to create a million-to-one chance, because they assume that every time someone said “it’s a million-to-one chance, but it just might work”, the blasted thing absolutely had to work.

I am fully aware that “Decanine Cantoris” has nothing whatsoever to do with singing dogs. What it really is--from what I remember about my choir director’ explanation of it--is where a choir is divided in half, each half being made up of all four parts (soprano, alto, tenor and bass). The first half, called “decanine”, sings something, and the other half, called “cantoris”, sings in reply. It’s sometimes used in English psalm-singing, at the discretion of the choirmaster. Here’s an example from psalm 97, verses 3 and 4:



Decanine: There shall go a |fire be|fore him:
And burn up his |enemies on |every side.

Cantoris: His lightnings gave shine |unto the| world:
The earth| saw it and| was a|fraid.

The lines are just to show when one measure of music is supposed to end and the next is to begin.

The “singing dog” bit came from a joke that somebody in my choir made upon hearing the terms for the first time. By the way, I’m pretty sure that I misspelled at least one of those words, but I’ve never actually seen them written down. If anyone knows the real spelling of these words, I’d certainly be willing to accept a bit of enlightenment from them on the matter. =)