The voice under all silences. Chapter 7
THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 7
Author: [info]pekeleke Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter Word Count: 3687 Rating: N-17 Summary: Four years after the final battle Severus Snape wakes up to HELL! Warning(s): Strong language. A/N: First snarry fic, ever. English is not my mother tongue so mistakes are to be expected. Beta: None Disclaimer: The characters used in this fiction are not mine. No money is being made from it.
THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 7
He regained consciousness to the miserable experience of Potter's presence at his bedside. Those myopic emerald eyes being the very first thing he saw when his lids finally parted and -unsettled right down to his very bones- it took him almost a minute to mask, what must have been a clear reflection of his dismayed discontent, behind the familiar blank expression that had been his faithful companion -while in the face of danger- for so long.
“The Boy Who Lived” frowned down at him with equal displeasure and the silence grew uncomfortably tense. Unpleasantly cold. Filled with so many things left unsaid that Severus fancied he could, literally, feel the poisonous emotions -they were both so carefully NOT talking about- attempting to become living entities, within the oppressively silent walls that held them trapped.
' You have slept for a long time. I was starting to worry ' The auror's tone was neutral when he finally uttered that particularly bewildering pair of sentences and Severus felt poised at the very edge of a perilous cliff. One that could lead him, so very easily, to the unthinkable consequences of failure... If he so much as offered the wrong answer to his new -and unwanted- master.
' I... I am sorry ' He offered that insincere apology finally. Unwillingly. Resentfully. The words wavered, between disheartened-croak and rebellious-squeak, as they broke into this new world were he must offer to this creature his... respect.
Verdant pools, alive with caution, raked his pale face as Lily's child smiled tightly at him. ' You have nothing to be sorry for, Severus '
He blinked very slowly, veiling his confused unease from that steady stare. He wondered what was it that Potter wanted from him, exactly: was it terror he desired to inspire in him? Was it just... plain old submission? Was it some kind of twisted mixture of those two emotions? He had no clue at all. Knew only that this was meant to be his punishment. That the boy detested him on an almost visceral level and that, whatever response the jerk desired from him... he would attempt to deliver it. For Draco...! But he was at a loss. He had to find out how to...
' Do you need some water, Severus? Or some more Pain-Away? You missed the last dose, you know? You were still asleep and Malfoy went bloody bonkers when the nurse said she'd wake you...'
' Draco? ' He gasped his godchild's name, startled by the horrible idea that the two had remained locked in the same room together, apparently looking over him. His head shot up from the pillows as he attempted to search the room, earning himself absolutely nothing but a shot of pure agony from the wound on his neck.
' Wrong Malfoy. Sorry!' The words were spat so viciously that he flinched. His neck hurt all the harder when his head turned abruptly, back towards the cold-eyed auror that now sat -rigid as a post- in the bedside chair, shooting him a look that was as sharp and lethal as a poisoned dagger. A look that he'd had never believed the boy could even produce, had he not been witnessing it with his very own eyes!
' Lucius was here? ' He croaked uncertainly. Feeling completely at sea as to how to behave. How to speak to the monster before him. How to react, at all!, to the words being uttered. To the barely restrained violence that seemed to pulse outwards, from every pore of that tautly held body.
Potter's shoulders shrugged in a dismissive little gesture. ' He's around somewhere. Gone to terrorise poor Jones, as far as I'm aware. Him and his bloody son, both, haven't left the place since you re-gained consciousness! In case you were wondering '
His whole body betrayed him -by sagging in utter relief- upon hearing that last assertion and he was, once again, on the receiving end of the most thunderous scowl.
' I'm doing what you wanted, Potter! Playing nice to you while you accost me in my sick bed, like the very Spectre of Death! Now, do your own part, and leave Draco alone, for Merlin's sake! I won't put up with you talking about my godchild in that disrespectful manner! ' He growled defensively. Absolutely livid with the obviously antagonistic behaviour the man was showing, every single time Draco was mentioned!
Those flawed copies of Lily's eyes blinked. Golden features convulsing into absolute fury when the man snapped back: ' Then stop worrying so much about that bastard! It's driving me insane!'
Obsidian coloured irises widened with shock. With absolutely appalled bewilderment. With utter incomprehension. ' How could I? He is here! YOU are here! There is nothing I desire more fervently than to have the both of you as far away from each other as humanly possible! ' His attempt to scream at the miscreant was an unmitigated disaster and he flinched, when the effort brought him new agony. His brow broke in clammy sweat as his throat muscles attempted to cramp. The simple act of breathing slowly becoming more laboured, as his traitorous body dared to respond to the awful pain. In an effort to calm himself, his eyes fell closed and he allowed his pounding head to sag, pathetically, against the too-warm pillows.
' Severus! '
He heard the voice. Registered the sudden, abject quality of the panic it projected, but was all together too busy, attempting to relax himself, to pay it any heed.
' Severus! '
The touch of blunt-tipped fingers as they, so very carefully, brushed a long lock of his dark hair away from his clammy forehead startled him so badly that he bolted upright. His wounded arm was jostled against a wide, muscled chest. Dangerously angry blue sparks began to appear -all over the protective surface of the healing ward, set over the limb- and he gritted his teeth fiercely, against the lacerating pain that suddenly set his whole left arm on fire.
'Oh, Gosh! I'm sorry! I swear I didn't meant to do that, Professor! I... Er... I'll... Do you want the Pain-Away now? No? Well... Mmm… Should I call the nurse for you? What...? '
'Potter! ' He managed to cut off that infernal babbling with a single gritted gasp and welcome, soothing silence, descended between them.
His breathing became harsher as he struggled with his own reactions, in order to bring his wayward body under control. Potter sat at the edge of his chair, like a lump made of stone. He seemed to have been petrified. Hexed into utter stillness. Frozen. Then he exhaled in a rush and shook that wild head of his. Trembling fingers curling closed into fists over his thighs:
' Look at me, Severus! ' It was a command. A fiercely whispered, strangely compelling, curiously desperate order, issued by the boy -in the most strained of voices- and he could do nothing but obey it.
His eyes opened to clash against green fire, framed by thick, clear lenses and a veritable forest of softly curled black lashes. Tanned features, rigid with anxiety, offered him a vision of stubbornly focused determination and a mouth that was neither a copy of James's nor Lily's, but a curious mixture of the two, opened to shape the next few words coaxingly: ' Breathe!... Hold on a second and breathe with me!: In! Out!... And again, Severus: In! Out!... Slow down, for Merlin's sake!...'
His dark gaze zeroed in on those lips as he forced himself to follow their commands. Listened to the boy's words with all his consciousness. Attempted to block off, completely, the discomfort emanating from his arm and concentrated on ignoring his embarrassment at having put himself in the awful situation of showing physical weakness before his enemy.
His breathing eased so very slowly... Time elapsing, like a relentlessly stretched elastic, into one of those awful eternities that so unfailing develops when you least desire for it to do so. There was nothing in the world but that green gaze... Those slightly moistened, half-opened lips guiding the responses of his own, constricted chest. One difficult breath became another. One blink of those eyes offered him unexpectedly welcome solace from the strange, urgent intensity with which they held him captive...
He felt trapped and so lost that he all but panicked. He could not understand what was happening at all and there was a horrible, threatening intimacy to the moment that he could not cope with. He attempted to close his eyes. Paper thin lids lowering, like shields, against the boy. But Potter... Potter was merciless.
' Look at me! ' He was ordered again, with a gruff growled command that felt like a deathly punch. One that was being directly aimed towards his frayed mind.
Sooty lashes fluttered unwillingly apart. Black depths cracked opened: exposed to unwelcome light. Made vulnerable by the most distressed fear they had ever shown or held before another. Revealing a world of unease as their owner stared, riveted, right into a veritable storm of green emotion.
' Severus...! ' His name was softly, gently, almost reverently pronounced and he felt himself splinter like an aged, battered shell. He had never heard his name being used so tenderly...
' P... please...! ' He started to speak, only to falter when his senses finally registered that he knew not what to say. He felt fragile and exposed. There was a drumming in his ears that was threatening to turn him utterly deaf. A dryness to his throat, forcing him into the most cowardly mutism...
The awful moment stretched and turned heavier. Green eyes holding his own captive, inside a disturbing swirl of warmth that he could not -would not!- surrender himself to. Abject panic finally drove him to unglue his lips... To find words from somewhere! To... bow!... before the child! And he begged, like a worthless scoundrel, for the permission that he now seemed to need to close his very own eyes!
' Please...! ' He repeated pathetically and knew not how to express himself further. He needed this strange connection broken to end this... madness!... He could not. Would not... submit... himself to the terrible danger inherent in such gentleness. In the green-tinged, fever burning brightly inside those eyes! In the pulsing, heavy silence that surrounded him... He needed to retreat, completely!, from this moment. Escape it. Forget it! Brutally erase it from his mind altogether...
' Please... what, Severus? '
Potter's tone was still gentle. Soothing. His gaze held him, like a thin thread holds a kite, and Severus found himself swallowing uneasily. Heart pounding, like a stampeding mountain troll, inside his ribcage as he became both, unable and unwilling to expose his weakness further.
Then a hand rose towards him: calloused palm curling in a sickeningly tender caress around his right cheekbone and he could not keep the desperation to retreat locked in any longer. ' Let me... allow me... Please! I... I need to close my eyes...!'
Young, pale lips smiled so sadly that they broke him and memories of Lily swirled within his mind, like jagged pieces of glass.
' Why? Does it hurt you, Severus? To look at me and see...? What do you see, I wonder? Not her, though, or you'd have never managed to fool us all... '
He blinked through those cryptic musings and the hand that held his cheek slowly fell away. ' I don't want to let you hide from me, Professor! Not any more... And if you close those beautiful eyes of yours and turn away, only Merlin knows when you'll allow yourself to SEE ME, once again...! '
There was some awfully thick knot of terror settling, so very heavily inside his throat, that he felt chocked. His whole body became rigid as he developed the most inauspicious certainty of impending doom that he'd experienced, since hearing the very last words the Dark Lord himself had -so callously indeed- hissed in his presence. ' I... do not understand... '
A soft, rueful chuckle met his shamefully meek confession and he prayed for the bed to be engulfed by a wayward vanishing spell with all his might, only to be most sorely disappointed.
' Of course you don't, Severus. I'd be surprised if you could! '
He didn't like that answer. He didn't like the little dejected sigh that accompanied it, either! Nor the frayed, choking silence that followed. Blinking dazedly away, he pulled his gaze off those defeated-looking features as a myriad of confused, tangled thoughts attempted to stampede throughout his exhausted mind. Right hand rising, to cradle gently the still glittering length of his wounded arm, he focused unseeing, ebony eyes down: over the efficiently wrapped extremity.
A soft sigh emerged from his companion and the man had the audacity to seat himself at the edge of his mattress. ' Tell me something, Professor: Why did you suddenly decide to fight off the vow? You had already agreed to my terms, if I recall correctly! '
He felt sick at the reminder of his error. The one decision that had cost him already more than any other: His own magic... His whole magic... relinquished into the hands of another... He could not control the shiver that raked through him, exposing his utter devastation to the derision of those all-seeing eyes.
' Do not look at me like that, Potter! I have no need for pity, least of all YOURS! '
The auror's body shifted sharply next to his and a hand shot out. Merciless fingers curled firmly around his chin and tugged. There was nothing he could do but comply to that forceful -if silent- demand, and his face rose once more. Defiant glittering obsidian confronted green-tinged stubbornness as the young lion's growl reached his ears:
' You'll answer my every question! Don't you recall the wording of our deal? '
How he wished in that second that, like the basilisk, he could too fall his enemies with the vitriol in his eyes! But that desire, like every other blessing he'd ever craved for, was not to be granted to him. His mouth tightened into a thin, displeased line and he pulled his face away with a contemptuous tug. Ebony gaze flinging daggers of pure hatred into the smirking visage of the cocky little bastard.
' I was forced into agreeing to a bond based on revenge, Potter! Even your minuscule mind should have been able to cotton-on to the fact that the Magic that followed the vow was... most emphatically NOT threatening! There was something off with the spell! It was trying to tie us both with... with... ' He faltered suddenly. Sharp cheekbones colouring uncomfortably as he wrestled with his vast vocabulary, in order to find a word -any word!- that could fittingly describe the intent that he'd felt in that Magic, other than the obvious...
He could not bring himself to sustain that bright gaze as the boy's awareness became clearer. A gasp broke free form those lips, followed by a quiet, awed chuckle. ' You could feel the intention of the Magic?... Wow! That's just... I don't know!... Awesome! '
He just... reeled! Seated rigidly on the bed, like some kind of freakishly peeved statue, as the ridiculous creature failed to react to the very horrific point of the confession he'd just made.
' Are you deaf, Potter? I said that the spell was behaving as if... as if it found some kind of... regard... between us both! '
The irritating whelp shook that headache-inducing nest of madness he called hair from side to side. ' Amazing...! I didn't even know it was possible, at all!, to “sense” the intention of a spell! '
His jaw locked in the familiar angry frustration that had always followed any kind of interaction with Potter in the past. ' Would you listen to yourself, boy? Intention is the most important aspect of all Magic! It is the one thing that defines it!: Dark and Light! Deathly or Healing!... There is not a curse or hex, ever written, that can't be pulled apart and analysed, based on the primary emotion that drives it's caster! '
Green eyes turned sombre as they registered his utmost agitation. Golden features softening with something very much like pity, when their owner studied him seriously in the small silence that followed.
' So... The wording of the vow didn't matter at all. Did it, Severus? The Magic sensed the intentions behind them and adjusted itself to them instead, regardless of our actions... '
He froze. Whole mind descending into the realms of utter incredulity, as the implications of that carelessly flung comment opened before him possibilities he'd never even considered: ' What intentions, Potter? '
The boy looked straight at him. ' My intentions, of course! I was the one with the wand! I was the one who demanded the Oath! I was the one who spelled out the conditions of it, and you simply... limited yourself to voice the words aloud! '
A pale blue-tinted vein began to throb visibly on his temple. His jaw locked as his teeth gritted and his hands closed into fists: ' What. Intentions. Potter? ' He repeated the same question in a frosty and deadly tone. Black, unfathomable anger rising within his chest, like molten lava.
' You wanted to be punished, Severus! But that was only you! I... I wanted something else entirely! Something you were, very obviously, never going to volunteer of your own free will so... I had to trick you into giving me my chance: I. HAD. TO! You must have needed someone to spout all of that awful revenge-stuff at you! Must have desired to hear it, with all your heart!, or the potion would have never taken me down that road...! '
He felt cold all of a sudden. Frozen to the very last cell within his body as he recalled that last, ghastly conversation they had shared: The boy's witless babbling... The fight that had ensued between them, culminating with the awful implication that he might had been suicidal, during those last hours of the Final Battle: “ You. Wanted. To. Die. Just. Like. She. Did!” the auror had screamed at him and his own incensed response had been equally brutal: “ I despise you, Harry Potter! “...
He remembered averting his eyes for a moment and then... Then the tinkling of some liquid, being carefully poured into a glass, had forced him to turn his head back around, in order to stare at the menace! He remembered the fleeting vision of a liquid. Barely a mouthful. A beautiful yellow liquid, with the same shade of sunlight...
' Felix Felicis...!' The name of that repellent potion broke from his lips with all the force of a murder accusation. With the disconcerted, horrified awareness that he had been tricked... into SLAVERY!, by this...BEAST...! in auror's uniform!
Potter had the decency to flinch. He was deadly pale and shaking. His throat convulsed as he swallowed visibly and his voice broke from those rose-tainted lips, like a whispered plea: ' Severus, I didn't know it would take me down that path! I had used it before, you see?, and it wasn't... quite that vicious! I wanted to... No! I -NEEDED!- a chance to tell you that I...! '
' You... You took FELIX FELICIS!... YOU BASTARD! You wanted to... make sure that I'd fall for your sick plans! I had not a chance against you that day, Potter! Not. A. Bloody. Chance! ' His rage knew no bounds. No limits! There was nothing to his self but hatred. Utter abhorrence. Dislike! He wanted to kill the bastard, so much!, that his mind shorted. His every muscle clenched with the need to harm him. Break him!. Bring him to the same horrifyingly humiliating position he himself had been brought to!
His whole body lurched forwards as he used the only recourse available to his weakened, magic-less, body and allowed the very inertia of the sudden movement to -brutally!- bring his whole head into a bone-crunching collision course with the jerk's face! Blood immediately began to pour, over his right ear and cheek, as Potter's nose broke with a most satisfying crunch.
' SEVERUS! ' the shocked hiss, muffled as it was behind the pained awareness of unforeseen retribution, was certainly worth the sickening jolt of reactive magic that sprung all over his broken arm when Potter, in his startled reaction to the attack, held him instinctively away by the shoulders. His body shuddered in the throes of the most odious agony -for the few frozen seconds it took the auror to realise that he had triggered the wards- and release him, as carelessly as he'd seized him in the first place.
Bereft of both, his own meagre strength and the unwilling support of the, by now, profusely bleeding Potter, Severus's body fell forwards -against the mattress- with a soft, but firm thud. The shock of it sent new waves of dizzying pain throughout his neck, his arm and, surprisingly, the upper half of his skull. He smiled, nevertheless, when his dark eyes caught a fleeting hint of crimson among the crisp whiteness of the bedding.
' I've hurt him! I've hurt him! ' he crowed to himself, with vindictive pleasure, and the last though to cross his mind -before he finally passed out from pain and exhaustion- was that he was not yet so defeated that he'd allow another Potter bastard to play hard ball with him and escape unscathed...