pekeleke (pekeleke) wrote in snape_potter, @ 2012-07-24 19:04:00 |
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Author: pekeleke
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Word Count: 4501
Rating: N-17
Summary: Four years after the final battle Severus Snape wakes up to HELL!
Warning(s): Strong language. Violence.
A/N: 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 28
When the knock finally came on his front door he'd been ready to accept that it wouldn't actually come that day. After that harrowing visit to the Manor he'd returned to Hogwarts in a state of chaotic anxiety and had been half expecting to find Potter seating on the couch as he'd stepped out of the fireplace.
He'd been too relieved to find himself alone to be surprised by the disconcerting... disappointment... that he'd felt at the absence of the auror.
As that first day dragged slowly on, he became more and more aware of the slight feeling of... concern... that was constantly whispering unfounded fears in the back of his already fretting mind.
Every time someone knocked on his door he jumped warily. His heart pounded within his chest and his pale face became ashen with distressed nervousness. He'd croak his permission to enter in a voice that was almost too breathless to be heard before standing up, too agitated to remain seated. Too weary of their upcoming confrontation to give the boy the advantage that looming over his own seated figure would grant him...
It was never him, though. Never!.
He'd sat through an exhausting amount of friendly visits. He smiled politely, so much so, that he became truly convinced that the muscles of his face would cramp, for all eternity, into the utterly ghastly image of his best attempt at a reasonably neutral smile...
By the time lunch came around he'd been merely irritated that Potter hadn't shown yet. He could understand why the child would want to allow him some time to cool off. He'd cut him of mid-sentence with another accidentally triggered act of wishful magic the last time they'd spoken, after all...
He'd been seated on the couch, feeling utterly trapped. He'd been distressed beyond endurance by the boy's unexpected use of the word marriage and had desired for the whole conversation to be... terminated!.
He didn't honestly know if he'd done it himself or if the castle had decided to provide him with the magic that he had been wanting to perform so desperately... What he knew was that, one second Potter had been speaking to him eagerly from the fireplace and the next the whole hearth had become an ancient looking wall of solid rock!.
It didn't seem to matter that the fireplace had returned to it's normal level of functionality by the following morning. He'd used it to go visit Luc, after all...
Potter had taken the action rather personally, it would seem, as the boy had not only failed to show up, when Severus had been actually certain that he would, but had also decided not to contact him through the floo, either!...
The afternoon stretched before him in and endless succession of over-exited student whispering, whenever they so much as caught sight of him, and the strangely new... warmth with which the other members of the staff seemed to be willing to treat him!.
He'd been forced to share a rather intriguing conversation with Longbottom about the new range of potion-related plants and shrubs that the man had started to raise in glasshouse number two.
George Weasley had demanded that he read his proposed curriculum for the DADA class, never-mind that the man had been using it for years!. It had never been revised by himself, apparently.
Severus had been uncomfortable the whole time the man had been standing next to him. Head bowed down to look towards the thick wad of parchment that he'd been carrying, in a way that had openly exposed the area were the man's left ear should had been...
He'd squirmed with discomfort and was utterly shocked when the dratted creature lifted his head suddenly and, after having caught him staring, smiled brightly at him:
"Don't worry yourself too much about it, Headmaster!. There is no one else alive who can claim to have been injured by you, Sir. It's a great honor.... I'm rather fond of it by now, you know?. It helped me finally pull my Angelina!. She's rather... entranced... by it!"
Severus had abandoned the teacher's lounge very soon after that truly disconcerting encounter and hadn't yet managed to gather enough courage to return!.
He'd holed up inside his own private chambers for the remainder of the day and proceeded to discover that his dearly missed former lifestyle was not to his taste anymore...
While living with Potter he'd spent most of his time longing for the solitude he used to have in abundance before the war. He had dreamed of having the peace of utter silence surrounding him once more. He'd imagine with great fondness all those mornings spent in splendid solitude, when no one had bothered him about breakfast or attempted to engage him in unwanted conversation while he tried to read one of his cherished books...
While he lived with the boy he had resented Potter's constant chatter. The constant noises that his unrelenting presence brought. The absolutely impossibility of having a single second of quietude to... retreat, within his mind, and just... think!.
Now though his thoughts were an unwelcome miasma of distressed fears and memories that were both old and new. His mind was crowded with tormenting thoughts of Lily. Of Luc's unique and ruthless take on what their relationship with one another had been truly about...
He remembered Potter's kiss and their subsequent fight. He remembered the gentleness with which the boy had actually come to his rescue when he'd needed him the most...
He'd been lost at Hogwarts. Afraid of how his actions might be interpreted by the magic of their oath. He had felt helpless, utterly terrified... He'd have gone mad with anxious terror if the boy hadn't reached him when he did!. Potter had been... beyond decent to him then. He had been positively caring. Reassuring. Tender. He'd been... utterly loving...
Sitting all alone in his high-backed chair he remembered that strange conversation they had held through Legilimency, or even the one they had through the floo, and a wave of deep loneliness settled over him.
He hadn't realized at the time just how... supportive the child was. How his constant presence, his unwavering intrusion into Severus's own thoughts and emotions, his constant demands for actual interaction between them, had brought them both so close to each other that now... now he just missed the blasted creature!...
He'd been missing him for weeks, if he was honest. His own behavior of late had been nothing but a bid for the auror's attention as he struggled and struggled to... communicate his own, desperate need for some sort of... resolution to their unwanted estrangement!.
With hindsight he could now see that he'd acted like an absolute jerk after their kiss, in the hope of driving the brat to take the kind of action that he himself felt he couldn't take. He'd wanted the child to explode. To force them back into friendship!. To help him navigate the stormy waters that were threatening the relationship that they had been sharing before Potter's unsolicited caress...
Everything would had been just fine if Potter hadn't come out with those astonishingly ridiculous claims of... love!.
The mere idea of giving up their friendship curled his stomach. He could not believe how... attached... he'd grown to the other man in so short a space of time!. He'd been missing their joint expeditions to the book-store. The teasing camaraderie that they exchanged as they browsed aisle after aisle in the local supermarket, tirelessly searching for those perfect ingredients that would inspire them to create the evening meal... He had even missed all those brainless films that the child loved and he... he could not bring himself to even think about the popcorn...
Losing this would be... it would be nothing short of devastating!. Absolutely soul-destroying. Truly ghastly... But the alternative was just... too unfair!.
Severus had been forced to live through the ordeal of accepting only friendship from the woman he'd loved beyond reason and he knew exactly how... devastating... such situation could be!. He had no intention of putting that child through it. He could not bring himself to do it. He wouldn't!.
In the end it all came down to what was right. He liked Potter. Maybe he even felt some sort of fondness for the auror. He'd enjoyed their budding friendship, while it lasted. Valued it to the point were he would miss it beyond what was healthy once he lost it... He wished with all of his heart that he didn't have to give it up, but... he did not love the child!.
He wanted... peace!. He needed to abandon all entanglements of the heart and just... find some sort of contentment that did not depend on others, for a change...
He agreed, at least on principle, with Luc's harsh opinion that he needed to free himself from Lily's ghost. But he refused to let go of one heartbreak to step straight into another!. Potter... Potter was a child who had a simple case of hero worship. The emotions that he claimed to feel might look now true enough but they were based on the kind of wishfulness that can only genuinely feed dreams.
Reality would end up turning that love to dust eventually. Reality would show the boy's dreamed up hero to be nothing but an ugly, monstrous man with a foul temper!. An old, wounded carcass that had never held much beauty within it's frame. A soul too burdened with sorrow to be brightened by the rash and fleeting promises of a man who was... too young for him, in every respect!.
One day Potter would wake up and find himself free from all these emotions that now trapped him!. He'd find shelter with another, far more suitable, young man. He'd find safety. And joy. Contentment...
Maybe then, they could resume their failed friendship... Or maybe, by then, it'd be too late to recover what would have to be severely broken, in order to buy the child his chance at... liberty!.
He'd just stood up, with the intention of preparing a cup of tea for himself, when the knock finally came. He knew, just knew, that this time it was Potter. He could feel the boy's agitated magic filtering through the door. Through the very walls... He could feel, in the very back of his head, the mere touch of the boy's restless mind as it projected a veritable hurricane of distressed anxiety straight into his very own consciousness.
His heart cramped with the awareness that this was it: the only time he would ever have to break a heart. Reject the affection of someone willing to adore him. This would be the last time he'd see the boy. The very last!...
He bid Potter entry with a tone that was barely above a whisper and then waited, still as a statue, for the door to be pushed open. For the gryffindor to act...
Potter came in like a whirlwind. Like a storm. Like only he could...
He was disheveled and looked wild. His hair was all over the place. There were deep shadows under his beautiful green eyes that screamed to the world the fact that this was a man who hadn't slept a wink. Hadn't actually gone to bed by the look of him.
The door closed with a loud clank and those wide shoulders squared, as if he himself were a fire-breathing dragon that the child must face and kill.
A pale face searched for him among the shadows that filled the room and that emerald gaze portrayed a deep despair when it finally clashed with his own:
"Malfoy says you are going to drop me!"
He was unbalanced by that uncompromisingly direct opening volley and more than merely surprised by the fact that Luc had, apparently, decided to intervene.
"Luc has no right to speak to you about any of this!. The situation does not concern him!."
Potter didn't even bother to show patience.
"You went to him, Severus!. Your very actions involved him in this, so... don't go now trying to blame him for deciding that he needed to stick his oar in!"
He swallowed a sharp retort and took a deep breath instead.
"Fine!. What did he have to say, then?"
Restless fingers burrowed through that dark mop of tangled locks.
"He told me to stay clear of you. To avoid you, for a week or two, using as many excuses as I could come up with!. He said that you needed to see me, while I'm absent...
He was reasonably certain that, if I managed to avoid giving you the chance to cut this off now, then you might end up shelving the idea altogether out of sheer loneliness."
He felt cold to his very bones at the mere possibility. He believed that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he condemned them both to a future filled with heartbreak for the wrong reasons!.
"I'm afraid, then, that my friend doesn't know me as much as he thinks he does!. Nothing will make me change this decision, Potter!. Not you. Not Luc. Not... loneliness!"
The auror's gaze became ablaze with the kind of fire that only those who are fighting for their very lives are able to call forth.
"Then you'll have to say it, Severus: out loud. To my face. With the kind of words that won't ever allow me to keep my hopes up!"
The demand cut through him like a knife cuts through butter. Pain engulfed him from the top of his dark head to the tip of his pale toes. His breath hitched and his pulse began to pound with sheer anxiety. He detested the situation!. He resented the awful guilt that was making every part of his tall body itch with discomfort!.
"I do not love you, Harry Potter!" He finally whispered in a croaked, dismayed whisper and felt like the lowest of all beasts when the boy's eyes filled with tears.
"I know that!"
They both looked into each other's eyes for a long second. Silence grew, like a dark cloud, all around them. Severus could bring himself to say no more. He didn't desire to harm this child!. Not now. Maybe not ever from this day forth...
He'd come to value this man for his own sake. He'd learned that Lily's child was a patient, loyal, gentle human being who deserved to find... happiness!. He could not bring himself to cause him more harm than this!... He just... couldn't!.
"For a man who could go to war with a bloody dictionary and come out victorious you are not being very articulate about this, Severus."
He was startled to discover that the auror wanted him to... elaborate!. The very concept had the power to make him feel sick. He started to shiver with horrified distress, feeling cold down to his bones. Faint with misery.
"I do not see what else is there to say. I can not give you the things you want from me!. This has to end right here for the good of us both!"
Potter sighed with heartfelt exhaustion and his eyes dulled visibly into a murky, cloudy mess of deep green sorrow.
"Wouldn't you say that that depends on what you think I want?. I agree that you don't love me. I even agree that, from were we are standing at this moment, it doesn't look very likely that one day you might. But then you'll also have to agree that you don't actually have a single clue about what exactly it is that I want from you!"
He was riled by that ridiculous claim. Utterly and totally unprepared to deal with this refusal to accept rejection gracefully!.
"How can you say that?. You told me just last night that you wanted marriage, Potter!. I would have had to be utterly deaf to have missed that!"
A sharp bark of bitter laughter broke the awful tension.
"I said that I would marry you if I thought you'd have me!. That's not the same as saying that I want to put my ring on your finger right this second and be done with it, Severus!. I'm not stupid enough to expect that you'll just... comply... with such a thing, for Merlin's sake!.
That's what I dream about, what I actually desire!. It is not what I believe possible for us to have, though. What I actually want is to have you in my life, in whichever capacity you can bring yourself to accept me!.
I want to be granted the honor of calling you my friend!. I want to know that you and I... that we can count on one another to be there, for whatever life might decide to throw our way tomorrow!. I want to see you, always!. I want to be beside you somehow!. I want us to continue as we were before I was idiotic enough to kiss you, OK?"
His throat dried with the utter horror of having to open his lips to repeat himself anew. He was not truly comfortable with the situation. He was... actually beyond sickened with the whole thing!.
"It doesn't really matter what spin you decide to put on it, Potter!. It all comes down to the same facts. I'm never going to be able to provide you with...”
"Friendship? Companionship? Support?. Don't be stupid, Severus!... Of course you are able to provide me with all three!. You just don't want to have to live with the discomfort of having me around now that you know about my feelings!"
He gaped at the audacity of the brat!. Potter had dared not only to interrupt him, in the rudest of manners, but had actually issued him a challenge that he had no intention of accepting!.
"I do not think it healthy for me to provide you with further... access to my person, when I'm fairly certain that I shall never come to reciprocate your... affections!. It is my sincere belief that you might have an easier time of... forgetting... your current feelings if our association comes to a clean end!."
"So you are sacrificing us in order for me to move on eventually!. Is that it?. You'll lose a friend but I... I'll get to benefit from your kind actions?. Give me a break, will you?. That whole idea is nothing short of a big, fat mountain of stinking troll-shit!"
He was so unprepared to have the boy deride him for his choice that he just... gaped!. Silence settled between them as his dark eyes widened with disconcerted befuddlement and settled over the auror's face with something very close to open disbelief.
"I beg your pardon?" He stuttered at last, utterly unable to come up with anything more eloquent.
"I said that you are a bloody idiot if you think I'll let you play the big, selfless hero and walk away!. I want you to be a bloody greedy bastard!. I want you to keep holding onto us and not be bothered with whatever the Hell happens to my heart!. That's none of your business anyway, Severus!. If I want to... pine... after you, like some kind of pathetic, pale-faced maiden, then that's my own dammed headache, OK?"
He was well past traumatized by this point!. He could not believe his ears!. Was this idiot actually daring to demand that he... ignore the whole situation and continue to encourage their association, without a thought for how much pain he might be causing?.
"I'm afraid that that's not possible, Mr. Potter!. I have experienced that kind of heartache in my own flesh!. I can't, in good conscience, allow you to... suffer... such fate!.
A man as stubborn as you are won't be able to let go, unless this relationship of ours breaks completely. Hope has a way of being our worst enemy every time that we dare to love another!"
Potter looked truly broken then. Smashed. Demolished...
He looked lifeless and weakened. Like a human-shaped lump that had lost his whole spirit. His every dream. His rightful claim to joy.
"It's not your place to allow or even ease my suffering, Severus!. The very idea that you believe yourself entitled to even try it comes to show how truly presumptuous you can be!.
I'm not a child any longer. I do not follow orders from anyone, least of all from you!. I will love, and hate, and care for whomever I see fit and there'll nothing you can do to stop me from doing so!"
He was faint with sheer stress!. Utterly drained by the antagonistic nature of their conversation. By the fact that he was forcing himself to go through with this, when the only thing he wanted to do was... collapse... back in his chair and close his burning eyes!. Hide, inside the most protected corner of his own mind, until all of this finally disappeared...
His body went rigid with the most unwelcome shock when the boy dared to touch him. He'd come closer while Severus's own thoughts had been turned inwards and a hand that was, as always, way too daring and too hot for it's own good had settled over the cloth that covered his forearm.
"Come and sit before you fall, Severus. Please!... "
Potter dragged him, most rudely, back towards his chair and even dared to push him down into it without so much as a by-your-leave!. He blinked with dark-eyed perplexity up into those fathomless depths of sheer determination and shivered when the child's rough-tipped fingers brushed a long lock of his dark hair away from his sweaty temple.
"Will you explode into outraged indignation if I order us some tea?. You look like you need some, Professor."
He felt numb with sheer surprise. With disconcertion. With the most absolute and irrational sense of... relief... that he'd felt in a long time.
Potter... Potter was taking over!. He was refusing to listen. He was being... stubbornly insistent that they continue exactly as they had been before, and he... he could not really work out how to convince the boy to do otherwise!.
Would it really be so horrible of him to just... give up?. Grant the gryffindor his attention. His friendship. His... support, without feeling this guilty about the fact that he... he could not, would not, ever love him?...
"Severus?"
Potter held onto him with those hands. Fingers curled very gently around his reedy shoulders and those eyes that could slay dragons fixed unblinkingly upon him.
"Look at me, Severus!. Do I have your permission to call for the drinks?"
His mind whirled and he moved his head in jerky, disjointed accord. He did not want to drink tea!. Not now. He wanted... He wanted to curl tightly into this chair and close his eyes. His mind. His senses. He wanted to... remain aloof!. He needed to escape...
He wanted to survive this very second without having to open his mouth. Without having to live, for ever after, with the knowledge that he could be weak enough to be this selfish!. That he could be monstrous enough to... condemn... Lily's child to the same sort of loveless misery that he himself had endured during the majority of his life...
"I do not love you!" He forced his trembling lips to say it again. Aloud. Precisely.
Potter flinched. But still held onto him, onto his shoulders, with those hands that just wouldn't let go!.
"I know that, Severus!" The four words reached him like pained, sharp-tipped daggers. They settled against his conscience like a wound that would never close.
"I will never love you. Never!. I won't go through that heartbreak again!..."
Potter's face turned visibly white. His hands shook. His green eyes filled with a veritable storm of wounded sorrow.
"Would you care for me, though?. As a friend, Severus?"
The question hung in the air for a long time. It felt, to his mind, like a blade meant for murder. Whatever his answer he'd be condemned to suffer the consequences of it from this day forth. Was he actually this selfish...?.
"I can not answer you. Not right now!. I shall not promise you anything!. I will not feed you false hope. I just... can't!.
I'll tell you this, though: we can not be friends, in the actual sense of the word, until you free me, Potter!. I can be your slave but not your friend. Not really...
You know this, child. You have always known this. I'm bound against my will to this castle. I was bound to Albus Dumbledore and to the Dark Lord in the same way. I have been a prisoner, in one form or another, for most of my adult life and I don't think I have the strength to live like that once more... You'll have nothing genuine from me if you continue to hold my fate in the palm of your hands..."
Potter laughed with the sort of mirth that betrays heartbreak. It was a soft and broken sound. Jagged, sharp, discordant...
"You are a hard man to bargain with. Are you not, Severus Snape?"
The question rent the air with a bitter kind of wonder and he was unable to look into those eyes as the boy seemed to wait for an answer that he couldn't offer him.
After a second of suffocating silence Potter finally sighed. He bit down on his trembling bottom lip and then stood back. Fingertips slowly releasing their grasp on Severus's own shoulders.
"Truth... Malfoy said you wanted truth, whatever that might mean...
I want to believe that it is your way of saying that you are finally ready to face this. That the time to stop playing games has finally arrived. All our cards are already on the table, anyway. We are both exposed now. Our strengths and our weaknesses have been left out in the open and now we are going to have to do this as it should have been done from the beginning...
I call forth the magic of all oaths!. I state, before all powers, that you: Severus Snape, have fulfilled the letter of our vow to my full satisfaction. I hereby release you from our terms!"
Potter's wand appeared then. It was pointed straight at him with an unwavering determination. Green eyes, shattered with loss, blinked only once and when the boy pronounced the spell his voice thundered in the silence like a fist demanding compliance. Clamoring for attention. Forcing the oath itself into utter and indisputable submission:
"Ego Dona Libertatem*!"
Magic swirled then around them both: warm, familiar and heartbreakingly loving. Severus felt it as it tried to touch him... so carefully!... It felt like a gentle caress intent on holding onto him for a single second longer...
When it finally retreated it left him empty. Hollow. Utterly bereft.
Freedom had never felt before quite this unwelcome. This lonely. This much like... absolute and irreversible defeat...
TBC...
* A/N: Ego Dona Libertatem roughly translates as I will grant you freedom.