I own nothing but the clothes on my back.

I got this idea after watching The Fall (which I highly recommend to those who haven't seen it) and to those who have I'm sure you'll notice the resemblance.

Enjoy!

One

Severus absolutely despised muggle hospitals. They smelt too strongly of antiseptic that burned your nostrils, they had no source of entertainment-you quite literally had to sit there and wait to get better- the staff made him question whether any dim-witted, lethargic dunderhead could enrol in medical training and the food, merlin the food.

So, while Severus was laying there on a hard white bed, waiting to get better, he thought being forced to stay in this miserable place was rather an extreme and unfair punishment.

Admittedly, it was with embarrassment and great shame to confess that he, a potions professor, had very nearly been poisoned to death. By non other than the alarmingly dull Amycus Carrow at that.

It was rather a rare poison, tasteless and fatal if left for an hour without consuming the antidote. Severus hadn't realised he had taken the poison a good half an hour after he had drank his noxious tea, when his legs started to ever so slightly stiffen. Under any normal circumstance, rather if an ordinary man had consumed the same tea, said man would be in a state of paralysis for three hours and forty-two minutes before it reached, and ultimately stopped, his heart.

However, these were not ordinary circumstances and Severus Snape was not an ordinary man, he knew the symptoms of almost every poison created and especially poisons created by his own hand.

Mortiferum Rigidum had taken him two months to plan and four months to create. He had never gotten to the Perfection phase, which is why the paralysis time wasn't a perfectly sound, rounded number. But it was his nonetheless and now begs the question, a question that he had been turning over in his mind for the past four days; just how on earth did that idiotic Carrow cretin manage to break past the wards of his personal lab and steal one of his very own potions? He had personally watched the man walk repeatedly headfirst into a ward, like a fly to a window.

And why did he try and kill him? Severus hadn't even seen the man since Voldemort's downfall five years earlier, thanks to that Potter brat. Severus just hoped to merlin that it didn't mean that the deranged megalomaniac had found a way to exist again and somehow knew of Severus' betrayal.

With his legs refusing to work for at least another three days, Severus believed he could have quite easily laid in that bed for a week without complain, but then his stomach just had to go and rebel against him. The antidote caused a nasty side-effect, something Severus wasn't aware of as he had never had need to take the antidote himself before, and now an ulcer was threatening to explode inside him which could cause rather problematic as he had no desire to die just yet. Thus, damned Dumbledore had insisted muggle remedies were far safer then magical ones to stop the risk of jarring the little beast and causing more damage. So the old man had sent him to this muggle hospital full of incompetent muggle healers for four weeks, even claiming he could "do with a rest, Severus."

Right then he didn't know whether he would have preferred Carrow to have succeeded if it meant staying here for the next three weeks and three days.

Without even his journals to entertain him, Severus spent as much time as he possibly could sleeping, pretending he was somewhere else and damning Dumbledore and Carrow to the deepest layers of hell.

"Are you hurt or are you sick?"

Severus jumped at a squeaky voice that was far too close for comfort and snapped open his eyes to see two giant green orbs hovering above him. With a strangled gasp he sat upright, causing a small body to loose their purchase on the bed and crash to the floor with a cry.

Severus hissed as his stomach protested over the sudden movement and the small figure picked them-self gingerly off the floor muttering a string of 'Ows' before fidgeting at the side of his bed. Severus suddenly realised the hovering green orbs were the too-large eyes belonging to a scrawny little boy who looked no older than about five, wearing too-large clothes with too-long messy black hair which was left to fall into his eyes. He sported the charming baby face maternal woman coo'd over, but his cheekbones were too sharp and his chin too pointed and he was just over the line of too thin and Severus was sure all the nurses just absolutely loved this little creature. His bony left arm was in a cast and sling that he kept swinging across his chest in a way that proved of forgotten pain or a desire to pro-long it's healing.

The boy watched and swung for a minute, seemingly unfazed by Severus' glare before asking again, "Are you hurt or are you sick?"

"What?" Severus snapped at the little monster.

"People who come here are here because they are hurt or they are sick, which one are you; hurt or sick?" He explained with all the logic and patience of a child trying to teach a younger child a valuable life lesson, more to feel cleverer than to help. Severus decided not to dignify the rugrat with an answer and turned away dismissively. He distracted himself with the struggle of raising himself higher up the bed and plumping up his pillows so he could sit up comfortably.

The boy obviously didn't get the hint. "I'm hurt. My arm broke."

"I can see that." Severus glared, aimed both at the boy and at himself for answering.

"Sooooo which are you?" The boy rocked back and forth on his heels and blinked, unnervingly curious, at the older man. His eyes flickered down over Severus, obviously trying to see if he could find a clue, a bandage or cast, to show the reason he was in the hospital.

Severus gave an almighty sigh before shifting his own eyes down at his body. "Both," he answered finally.

"Both? Why are you both?" The boy's interest was impossibly more piqued and Severus inwardly groaned.

He glared harder at the small boy and snapped, "What do you mean, why? I'm both because I'm both."

The little tyke shook his shaggy head, a small frown on his face, "No. Why-how are you both?"

Severus stared at the boy for a full two minutes before deciding feeling irritation aimed at someone other than himself, a senile headmaster and an idiotic sycophant was somewhat refreshing at this time and he reluctantly muttered, "Someone tried to poison me."

The child's eyes got impossibly wider and he moved towards Severus, leaning against the side of the bed. "Poison? Why? Didn't they like you?"

"Evidently not." Severus sneered, pointedly leaning away as the boy nodded sympathetically.

The little monster was actually pitying him!

The boy leaned ever closer and whispered conspiringly, "Were they bad?"

Severus shoved his face towards the child and bared his sharp yellowing teeth. "Maybe they tried to poison me because I'm bad."

It didnt have the desired effect and the boy smiled as if Severus was the imbecilic child in the exchange and shook his head pityingly, "No, your not bad."

Severus blinked, snorted and leaned back against his pillows, giving the boy a side look. "And how could you possibly know that?"

"You don't look bad." He shrugged as if that was proof enough.

Severus raised a dark eyebrow and muttered, "I'm sure there are plenty who would disagree with you."

"No no, bad men are big and fat and have moustaches," he reasoned, holding his right arm out and around his body while his left failed tried to follow in a mimic of an obese person, puffing out his cheeks.

"I see." He nodded in a false show of over-agreement, sneering at the child before sending him one more glare and turning his attention towards the empty bed opposite his own.

"I'm sick too, but not because someone tried to poison me."

Severus glanced back at the child who was watching his feet as he stood on one leg then hopped to the other. "I thought you said you were hurt?"

The boy stilled on his left leg and frowned up at the dark man,"That was before I knew you could be both."

Severus opened his mouth to retort with a snide remark before decided not to waste his breath and turned back to aimlessly stare around the ward.

There were only two other occupants in this ward; an elderly gentleman who spend a lot of time either asleep or muttering to himself, and a middle-aged woman who hadn't woken up once since Severus had been admitted. He pondered, if she was in a coma why she wasn't in her own room, or if she just awoke when everyone else was asleep.

"Why did they try an' poison you?"

Severus clenched his teeth and mentally counted to ten.

"Are you going to die?"

He spun his dark head round to stare at the boy in outrage who looked far too blasé and was now inspecting Severus' bedside table. "What!? You don't ask someone-put that down this instant!"

Suddenly a voice called from the ward's open doors, "Harry, there you are!"

A young, pretty red-headed nurse trotted over to Severus' bed, smiling fondly at the little boy who grinned sheepishly up at her. "Don't bother the poor man," she smiled apologetically at Severus, "Sorry, he's a curious type."

Severus narrowed his eyes at her, "I noticed. Don't you have a separate ward for children patients?"

"Of course, it's right down the hall," she replied, holding out a hand for the small boy to take.

"And do you usually allow the little beasts to wander around as they see fit and disturb other, genuinely ill, patients?" Severus asked, snidely.

The nurse blinked up at the man, frowning slightly. She glanced down at the boy once before giving Severus a professional look. "No. Sorry sir, it wont happen again. Come on Harry, Dr Falton is looking for you."

With a small nod to Severus, she led the little boy from the bed. As they got to the door, the child looked back and gave Severus a small smile and a little wave, a waggle of short fingers. Severus' unimpressed look turned into a glower as he heard the little beast whisper loudly to his nurse, "Is he going to die?"

Severus growled and slumped back against his pillows, cursing Dumbledore and himself for entertaining the thought, just for a second, that he was going to have a child-free few weeks.

But mostly he cursed Dumbledore.