The two days of rest passed in a haze of reluctant recuperation. Severus had barely mustered the energy to argue when Aurora had dragged him bodily from his workspace, her fingers wrapped around his wrist with surprising strength as she marched him to his chamber and threatened to hex him into next week if he so much as thought about sneaking back into the lab. The threat had been delivered with such casual authority that he found himself oddly compelled to comply.
He had slept nearly twelve hours straight on the first day, his body finally surrendering to the kind of deep, dreamless exhaustion that seemed to pull him down through layers of consciousness until he was lost completely. When he finally stirred, every muscle ached as though he had been running for days, his limbs heavy and uncooperative. By the second evening, some of the deep shadows beneath his eyes had begun to fade, the hollow look that had been haunting his features softening slightly, though his mind still itched restlessly with the persistent need to return to his work.
On the morning of the third day, Aurora was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, arms crossed and wearing an expression that suggested she had been expecting his attempt at escape.
"Sit." She planted a generously filled plate of scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and steaming tea in front of him at the long breakfast table, the ceramic clinking against the polished wood with finality.
"I don't—"
"You do." Her tone was final, brooking no argument, and something in her steady gaze seemed to cut through whatever protest he had been preparing.
To Eileen's surprise, Severus obeyed without further resistance. She sat a little straighter in her own chair, watching with quiet amazement as her son took small but deliberate bites, chewing slowly and methodically. It wasn't much—he still moved with the careful precision of someone forcing himself through the motions—but it was more progress than she had managed to coax from him in weeks of gentle pleading. Aurora caught her eye across the table and gave the faintest smile, a subtle expression that seemed to say: leave him to me.
When Severus finally led Aurora into his private laboratory, she slowed on the stone steps, her breath catching as her eyes widened to take in the extraordinary sight before her. The underground chamber looked more like a scholar's archive than a functional workspace — towering stacks of ancient grimoires and leather-bound journals created precarious towers that nearly brushed the vaulted ceiling, while thick Muggle anatomy textbooks were piled high beside gleaming enchanted microscopes that hummed with magical energy. Rune-scribed containment wards carved deep into the dungeon stones pulsed with a faint, ethereal glow, casting dancing shadows across the cluttered surfaces.
Aurora whistled low, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. "Merlin's beard, Severus. You've built yourself a proper war-room out of parchment and ink."
Severus ignored her pointed remark, his black robes billowing as he moved with practiced efficiency toward his workbench, gesturing her toward the scattered notes and diagrams that covered every available surface. "Look here carefully," he said, his voice taking on the intensity it held when he was deep in research. "Vampire blood behaves unlike any natural substance — it clots unnaturally, moves sluggish and thick, almost metallic in consistency. It's as though some unseen force drags it backward through itself, fighting against its very nature." His pale finger traced across a detailed sketch. "But werewolf blood—examine this closely—the behavior is even more disturbing. It mutates in predictable cycles even days before the full moon approaches. Watch." He tapped his wand against a sample vial, and Aurora could see the cells shifting and writhing under the microscope's lens. "The cells shift continuously, anticipating the transformation that hasn't even begun."
Aurora bent over the intricate diagrams, her clever dark eyes scanning the meticulous sketches and annotations that covered the parchment in Severus's precise handwriting. She studied the blood samples with the focused attention of someone who understood the implications. "You keep calling it corruption in all your notes," she murmured thoughtfully, her finger following his detailed observations. "But what if you're approaching this from the wrong angle entirely? What if it isn't corruption at all? What if it's simply adaptation that's gone terribly wrong?"
Severus's eagle-feather quill paused mid-stroke in his pale hand, a drop of ink forming at its tip. For a long heartbeat, he said absolutely nothing, his black eyes growing distant as her words sank in and shifted something fundamental in his understanding. Then, slowly, his voice barely above a whisper: "Then perhaps I don't need to purge it from their systems entirely. Perhaps instead I need to rewrite it at its very foundation. Or—" his obsidian eyes gleamed with a sudden, dangerous light in the flickering candlelight—"perhaps I need to readapt it once again, guide it back to what it should have been."
Aurora looked at him steadily across the cluttered workbench, seeing the spark of breakthrough in his expression, then nodded once with quiet understanding. That very night, long after she had returned to her dormitory, she sat at her small desk and wrote a long, carefully worded letter to her former potions mistress, methodically summarizing Severus's revolutionary hypothesis and the potential implications of his research.
The sub-laboratory beneath Prince Manor carried the scent of iron and stone, mingled with the acrid tang of preservation potions and old blood. The ancient wards hummed faintly in the walls, their magic thrumming through the carved stones like a steady heartbeat. Severus stood at his workbench, surrounded by an array of crystalline vials, enchanted instruments, and parchment covered in his precise, angular script. His quill hovered above fresh notes as his three volunteers gathered under the watchful glow of floating candles.
Lucian reclined against the far wall with practiced indolence, his skin pale as winter bone and stretched taut over sharp cheekbones. Though he maintained his air of disdain, the subtle tremor in his fingers and the way his dark eyes tracked every movement betrayed the gnawing hunger that never truly left him. "So, what fresh torment awaits us today, boy? Another of your delicate pinpricks?"
"Controlled sunlight exposure," Severus replied with clinical detachment, not looking up from his preparations. "Applied to a sample of your blood, not your person."
Lucian's mouth curved in a sardonic smile, revealing the barest hint of elongated canines. "How disappointingly cautious of you. Coward." Despite his mockery, he pushed away from the wall and extended one pale arm toward Severus, his movements fluid yet predatory.
Severus guided the enchanted needle to Lucian's wrist with steady hands. The instrument drew blood without pain, filling a small crystal vial with liquid so dark it seemed to absorb the surrounding light. With deliberate precision, Severus positioned the sample beneath a warded mirror, adjusting the angle until concentrated sunlight refracted through it in thin, focused streams.
The reaction was immediate and violent. The blood hissed like acid on stone, its surface bubbling and writhing as though alive. Dark clots formed and dissolved in rapid succession, the liquid seeming to war against itself in endless, agonizing cycles. For one long moment the sample burned with an inner fire, then lurched into a sluggish, stuttering regeneration that never quite succeeded.
Severus's quill moved across the parchment in quick, certain strokes: Subject's blood exhibits autonomous conflict response. Not simple decay—active internal warfare. Regenerative properties present but unstable.
Rowan shifted restlessly nearby, his broad frame coiled with barely contained tension. The werewolf's calloused hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, and when he spoke, his voice carried a rough edge that hadn't been there weeks before. "You want observational notes? Here's one for your precious records: the change is already starting. The moon's still four days away, and I can feel my bones humming like tuning forks. It's like the wolf is whispering through my marrow, promising me what's coming before it tears me apart from the inside out."
Severus lifted his gaze from his notes. Rowan's normally brown eyes were now rimmed with an unsettling ring of yellow, and his nostrils flared as though scenting something the others couldn't detect. Severus recorded these details without comment, his expression remaining carefully neutral.
Gareth snorted from his position near the door, one scarred hand rubbing absently at the twisted flesh that ran from his left ear to his jaw—a souvenir from his last encounter with a particularly aggressive boggart. "Well, aren't we a cheerful lot. At least I'm finally proving useful for something worthwhile. My da used to joke that I was only good for killing sheep and disappointing him. Now I get to be poked and prodded in the name of magical research instead. Grand bloody improvement, that."
Lucian's smirk widened, showing more of those predatory teeth. "Perspective, dear Gareth. At least you're still drawing breath. Some of us consider that a luxury."
Severus silenced them both with a sharp look and returned to his meticulous documentation. Every word carried weight, every observed detail could prove crucial. Each measurement, each reaction, each fragment of data might be the difference between revolutionary breakthrough and catastrophic failure. The future of his research—perhaps his very legacy—hung in the balance of these careful observations.
Later, when the volunteers had been led back to their reinforced quarters—their footsteps echoing hollowly down the stone corridor—Aurora turned on him with barely contained fury.
"You're treating them like ingredients in one of your potions."
Severus's dark eyes lifted slowly from his parchment, the candlelight casting sharp shadows across his angular features. "If I hesitate, if I allow myself to soften, they remain cursed forever. I will not pity them into chains they can never break."
"They are people, Severus." Aurora's voice cut through the chill air like a blade, her breath visible in the cold dungeon atmosphere. "Not laboratory samples. Not just curses wearing human skin and speaking with borrowed voices."
For a long moment, silence pressed hard between them, heavy as the weight of stone above their heads. The scratch of his quill had ceased, leaving only the distant drip of water somewhere in the darkness. Then Severus exhaled slowly, a sound like wind through dead leaves, and set his quill aside with deliberate precision.
"And if I allow myself to see them only as people—as the friends and colleagues they once were—I risk faltering when the crucial moment comes. When I must choose between their temporary suffering and their permanent salvation." His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "I cannot falter. Too much depends on it."
Aurora's expression softened fractionally, though the steel in her posture did not yield. "Then I'll be here to remind you of the balance. To make sure you don't become as cold and merciless as the very things you're fighting against."
Their eyes met across the cluttered workspace—not enemies circling each other, not perfectly aligned allies, but two souls bound together by mutual respect and a shared understanding of the terrible necessity before them.
That evening, Aurora sat perched on a worn wooden stool beside Severus's cluttered desk, methodically flipping through the maze of parchments spread before them. Ancient wizarding diagrams covered in arcane symbols lay interspersed with precise Muggle medical charts he'd painstakingly copied from library textbooks. The candlelight flickered across pages filled with his sharp, angular handwriting—notes scrawled in margins, theories crossed out and rewritten, desperate calculations that seemed to spiral endlessly.
She studied the dark circles beneath his eyes, the tremor in his ink-stained fingers, the way his shoulders hunched with exhaustion. Her frown deepened with concern.
"You're burning yourself out, Severus. You're trying to solve vampirism and lycanthropy at once. No one's found a cure in centuries—not Salazar Slytherin, not the greatest minds of St. Mungo's, not even the most brilliant Muggle scientists. There's a reason for that. Don't rush this. Don't take on both monsters at once."
Severus's mouth tightened into a familiar line of stubborn resistance, his black eyes flashing with the same defiance that had carried him through years of torment.
But Aurora pressed on, her voice gentle yet insistent. "Look at the data—really look at it. Vampirism is blood, cellular regeneration, something tangible you can measure and manipulate. Lycanthropy is identity, consciousness, the very essence of what makes someone human. They're fundamentally different problems requiring entirely different approaches. You've already made more progress on blood manipulation than most researchers achieve in decades. Focus there first. One step at a time."
For once, Severus didn't snap back with a cutting retort or dismiss her concerns with cold indifference. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking softly, and stared at the red-stained sketches littering every inch of the desk's surface. His gaze lingered on diagrams of blood cells, transformation charts, and failed experiment notes. The weight of months of sleepless nights seemed to settle over him as he processed her words. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he nodded.
"Perhaps you're right. Vampirism first. The wolf can wait."
Aurora smiled faintly, relief evident in her expression as she closed one of the heavy grimoires with a decisive snap that echoed through the quiet room. "Good. Then maybe you'll live long enough to actually finish this work instead of collapsing from exhaustion halfway through."
Severus allowed the corner of his mouth to twitch upward, just barely—the ghost of what might have been called a smile on anyone else. The storm of his obsession had not passed, the demons still clawed at his conscience, but at least, for tonight, he had found an anchor to steady his course through the turbulent waters ahead.
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