The voice under all silences. Chapter 32

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 32. 

He looked at the picture on the front page of the Prophet with dismayed dark eyes and then plopped, utterly devoid of all strength, down into his chair.

He'd been reckless. Utterly, ridiculously stupid and now he had to endure the horror of being confronted with this...

Besotted Saviour fails to enthrall our Greatest Hero...

If the caption of the article was bad, then the photograph that accompanied it was worse. It showed them dancing together during his Order of Merlin reception ball and it had been craftily timed to catch them looking rather... odd.

Although they were both clearly waltzing together, Harry had been caught looking up at him with the kind of joyous adoration that not even a grainy picture could disguise and he... he was holding onto the boy so carefully that he looked very stiff and uncomfortable. There was a slight frown touching his forehead and he seemed... vexed... with his dancing companion.

Despite the fact that his eyes were clearly seeing proof that this had actually happened he could not remember this instant in any way. He remembered... joy and gratitude. Peacefulness. Calm...

He'd danced at a ball for the very first time in his life and it had felt so wonderful... he'd twirled around the ballroom with Harry for a while. One song giving way to another as they swayed to the music. Then Minnie had cut in front of them, demanding her turn with him, and that had started a strange and disconcerting evening of dancing with her and Poppy, with Aurora and Pomona. With Cissy and even, in a moment that had had them both grinning at each other like little children, with Draco.

Now the Prophet had picked up a story that twisted the beautiful evening into some sort of lurid three-ring-circus and he felt so disappointed that he wanted to go back to bed and curl under his blankets for all eternity.

There was another picture of Harry, seated at a table in what appeared to be splendid solitude, while he himself could be seen dancing in the background with Aurora. The caption to that one read a disconcertingly inaccurate:

Potter's hopes crushed as his man dances the night away with a string of Hogwarts teachers...

“No. Oh, no!...”

He could not believe that this was happening to him!. Couldn't cope with the horrible idea that his selfish desire to dance could have brought this kind of... ridicule... to a very dear friend. He should have known that it wasn't the best idea to expose himself in this way. Not in such a public venue... But, with Harry by his side, he'd believed himself entitled to some fun. He'd dared to imagine that he could allow himself to abandon his protective shield of formal rigidity without having to pay any sort of heavy price for that mistake...

His head started to show the first signs of a terrible migraine and he wondered what, in the name of Salazar, had possessed him to believe that he could behave this idiotically in public without expecting the whole bloody world to butt in and find something hurtful to say about it all. Ebony eyes raked the whole article twice and the very breath halted inside his lungs as his increasingly disbelieving eyes proceeded to inform him that whoever had signed this... this... atrocious pack of lies had painted the picture of a sweet, besotted Harry who'd allowed himself to descend into cringing ridiculousness, in order to ensnare the attention of a man who couldn't even see him...

“Severus?”

He jumped a mile high in his chair and turned around wildly. Hand steady around his wand and eyes all but shooting lethally cold daggers towards the fireplace. He felt crazed with shamed discomfort, sickened with abject misery. His stomach dropped to his feet as he discovered Harry's face examining him carefully from within the green-tinged fire that graced the hearth.

“I'm sorry, Harry. I... I am so sorry... I don't know how I can fix this, but I promise you that I'll try. I'll send a letter to the editors. I'll have Luc's lawyers descend over whoever wrote this, like a pack of Dementors... I promise you that they'll print a retraction before the day is over!”

On the other side of the flames Harry sighed. His eyes shone with something that looked so very much like sorrow that Severus' own consciousness writhed with deep guilt. He had been so selfish last night... He had thought only of himself. He had placed his dear friend under the scrutiny of every derisive son of a bitch there was and allowed himself to be used as a tool to humiliate the auror completely.

“So I'm too late. You've already seen it... I want to cross over, Severus. Do I have your permission to do so?”

He was shattered by the seriousness of that tone. By the fact that the boy wanted to hash things out in person. By the very real possibility that public derision could be the one thing that the gryffindor would not be able, or willing, to... ignore.

Would this be the end of their friendship then?. That'd be so unfair... after managing to survive the upheaval of Harry's love confession and his own negative reaction to it, were they really going to lose it all over some inflamed little article?. His eyes closed with undisguised distress and he couldn't swallow the thick lump that was lodged inside his drying throat. Not even to grant the boy permission to cross over.

Thankfully Harry seemed to read him like a book and it was only a few seconds before the floo was properly activated and the most determined version of the boy that he'd ever seen was strolling straight towards him.

“Severus... Severus!. Look at me!” He could hear the clear command to obey, and obey promptly, in the voice of the Head Auror and found himself following directions meekly, like a brainless, tethered puppet.

His dark eyes settled over the flashing green ire that was so clearly imprinted on Harry's own gaze and a shiver of utter dejection raked him from head to toes.

“I'm sorry!. I'm sorry, Harry. So sorry... I... I shouldn't have ever asked for that dance...”

The explosive sigh that rent the air at that second halted his frantic words at once and he flinched, like a terrified and wounded bird, as his eyes caught the sudden raising of the gryffindor's tanned hands.

Harry froze mid-motion and they both stared at each other with a kind of terrible understanding. Silence became an entity so thick that he actually believed that he'd be able to touch it's jagged edges, if he so much as lifted his own hands.

Nothing moved in the office for a long and utterly suffocating eternity. Then the boy fell to his knees beside the desk. Careful movements bringing unusually trembling digits into gentle, warm contact with his own freezing-cold hands.

“It's OK, Severus. You are perfectly safe with me. I'm not going to hurt you... I'd never hurt you!. I'm not your father and you are not your mother. Neither of us is going to become like either of those two. Gosh... I could kill that bitch for this!...”

He was so puzzled by those last seven words that he blinked in confused befuddlement and stared down, straight into his companion's thunderous face, with a total lack of understanding.

“Bitch? What bitch? I don't think I follow you, Harry.”

“Skeeter. Who else?. She likes to write under an alias every now and then. This is one of those occasions when she didn't have the balls to publish her poisonous trash under her own name. I bet even she knows how many people she's just pissed off with this nonsense!”

“Nonsense? She called you a shamefully pathetic besotted fool in this article of hers!. She's insulted you and scorned both, your reputation and your feelings, without any sort of pity and it's all because of me. None of this would have happened if I hadn't been idiotic enough to ask you to dance...”

Harry's jaw clamped so rigidly that he could see the twitching muscle on the side of it as it began to pound crazily under the strain of the auror's strong emotions.

“Don't you dare!. Don't you dare regret having asked for something as simple as a twirl around that ballroom!. Don't you dare regret having had the courage to decide that you could have some fun, just because this greedy, abusive, soulless monster of a journalist has decided to use us both to sell some more newspapers.

You were happy last night, Severus. So happy... I'd have given you that dance and more just to keep that lovely expression on your face for the rest of your life... I'm not letting this dammed article ruin that moment for you, no matter what. This is not your fault. This doesn't even matter to me. Do you understand me?. This is trash, and we both know it!. Actually... almost everyone knows it. You are the only one I know who'll be bothered by it...”

He gaped at the boy. Mind abuzz with a hundred and one thoughts that held not a single shred of his usual ruthless logic. He felt out of his depth. Out of control. He felt utterly exposed and vulnerable. He felt perfectly unable to cope with this... wholly unexpected situation.

“But... this article is totally humiliating to you, Harry. She is laughing at you publicly!. She... she... she calls you a hopelessly devoted loser...”

“Then she is wrong isn't she?. I'm here and so are you. I was among the very few you danced with last night. I haven't lost you and I'm not going to. Not over this...

I'm not humiliated, or ashamed, or whatever bloody word she uses to describe my feelings for you, alright?. I love you with all of my heart, Severus. My emotions are all beautiful and precious and absolutely wonderful to me!. Loving you does not humiliate me. It doesn't bring me shame or turns me into some forlorn little shadow... It makes me stronger. It makes me happy. It has allowed my heart to thrive and my life to have a reason to continue. Can't you see that I'm nobody, if I'm not this man who adores you?...

I want you to look at me and see the truth. There's no need for you to panic, or to suffer in reaction to this rubbish!. There's no need for you to berate yourself over those moments that brought you so much pleasure... I'd do it all over again, even if I knew that this was going to happen.”

His cheeks flushed crimson-red and the stiffened rigidity with which he'd held his body disappeared as those words sank within his mind. He sagged then in relieved acknowledgement that this wouldn't be the end of their relationship. His hands held onto Harry's own tightly. Too tightly. He could not control his need to... hold onto the boy for dear life.

A soft sigh shattered the uneasy silence and the fingers of Harry's free hand came up to card gently through his hair. His eyes closed, forehead butting softly against those callused digits as he allowed himself to enjoy the comfort of accepting this small token of affection without fuss...

“It's OK, Severus. Everything is OK...”

His eyes shot open then and he jerked his head away in order to stare at the gryffindor with a sort of appalled wonder.

“How can you even say that?. They are laughing at you, Harry. They are... they all know exactly how you feel and are using your weakness to...”

A careful hand framed his jawline and a silencing thumb was pressed against his lips in a gentle, but firm, gesture. Intense emerald eyes bored into his own with such focused intensity that he felt as if their look alone held the power to burn him from the inside out, mark him somehow. Claim him.

“Loving you is not a weakness, Severus. Loving you is the best thing that I've ever done!”

They both looked at each other in the small silence that ensued and his heart froze with the absolute certainty that he held this man's heart in the palm of his hand. He didn't want to crush it, but he wasn't the best guardian for such treasures...

“I have never held my emotions out, onto the light, Harry. I can't do this thing you do. It scares me...

I don't want to be responsible for anyone judging you harshly. I believe that you deserve... better than this. Better than me. Better than being utterly humiliated by the likes of Rita Skeeter because of me.”

The loud gasp that the boy exhaled sounded like a wounded cry in the aching silence. It made him flinch with the guilt of a murderer and he turned his face away, closed his eyes. Chose to find refuge in temporary, self-inflicted blindness, like true coward that he was...

He could inflict the hurt, but couldn't bear to witness it. He could push the boy away, but dared not confront the pain it caused him... He could be a cold-hearted bastard, for Harry's own good, but lacked the strength to lie outright to the boy's face...

“And I believe you are wrong about this. About love in general...

I know what you really think about all matters of the heart, you know?. I know how you used to deal with them. How you hide your affection for others under layers of misdirection and fake indifference. How you keep love like a secret made for darkness...

I think it's time we talk this through, Severus. I think it's time someone actually tells you that you are wrong, dead wrong, about it all!.”

His mind tried to understand those strange words, but it could not. He knew not what the child was trying to imply here but, whatever it was, he didn't like it in the slightest.

He'd be the first man to agree with the idea that he wasn't the most rational of men when it came to such things, but he'd never developed a bloody philosophy about relationships, either.

He'd loved too. Maybe not greatly, or perfectly, or even successfully, but he'd tried and he'd done the best he could...

He resented the very insinuation that he was some sort of reclusive die-hard bachelor. He'd actually spent most of his adult life holding on to love. Trying to prove that he'd been worthy of it... trying to deserve it.

He was finally beginning to understand that he craved to be in possession of someone's affection with the same kind of greed that a cactus craves rain-water. He... He might be too cowardly to risk his heart again, but... that did not stop him from holding on to his unreasonable dreams with every last shred of hope that had managed to survive the ruthless hardships of his life.

“I don't understand...”

To his never-ending surprise he found himself on the receiving end of a wholly puzzling question:

“Do you remember Kreacher, Severus?”

His brow furrowed in disconcerted puzzlement and he answered it warily:

“Black's old elf? Yes, I remember him. Why? What has he done now?. He is an odd one, that elf. Always looking at me with that strangely intense look, always following me around... I'm not sure he is completely sane, but then I'm not surprised. Once you consider the family he's served for so long, one must wonder about the kinds of things he's seen and done...”

Harry stood up then and looked straight at him for a long time. Silence grew as they both remained still. The boy making his mind up about whatever it was that he wanted to say and he, himself, lost among a million of small, hazy recollections about that elf and his weird fetish for him. Things he had forgotten about or simply ignored, things that had never really been quite normal...

“Kreacher died about six months after the end of the war. He was old and he was tired. He believed that he had failed in his last task and so... he allowed himself to drift away from life”

He could not imagine what in the bloody Hell the boy could possibly expect him to say in answer to this announcement, so he gritted his jaw and endured the small silence that followed with as much forbearance as he could muster.

“He died the day after the head of St Mungo's Healers finally found the balls to tell Draco that you were dead in every way that mattered to them. He wanted your godson's permission to cast the Finis Cor* spell on you.

Kreacher was in the room with all of us. He had shown a willingness to look after you and we... we saw nothing odd in that. We assumed that he needed something to do after the war. By the time I finally understood his strong attachment to you he had already passed away”

His dark eyes looked at the boy in utter, undisguised confusion. He could not begin to piece together this strange tale. Kreacher had never been particularly loyal to anyone. He'd been an absolute pain in the arse most of the time...

Always muttering nonsense under his breath. Always giving lip to Albus about the Real Masters of the house of Black and the strength of their supposed hearts. Always hiding in the shadows and spying on them all with those bulging, hate-filled eyes...

Always... Always coming to his aid whenever he'd been weakened or wounded on the field, silently apparating him to safety and taking care of him... A veritable mountain of old memories flashed across his mind-scape and he recoiled with a new and horrifying suspicion as to where exactly this already creepy conversation could be going.

“I... No. No!. I refuse to accept the idea that the elf... Are you crazy, Potter? That's not only so unnatural that it doesn't even bear thinking about, it's plain and simply sick!. I'd have never... No. No. That elf was crazy or something!. I'm not willing to believe that it could have held some kind of twisted affection towards me.”

Harry's smile was a slash of pale sorrow. His green eyes shone with something very much like defeated discontent and he allowed himself to fall back, into the closest chair, with a loud plop.

“But he did, Severus. Kreacher believed in the possibility of your recovery with so much hope that when the Healers told us they couldn't save you his whole world crashed down. He lost his will to live. He believed that he had failed to keep you safe... You were his reason for living, don't you see?. The last task that his beloved master ever gave him was to make sure that you survived the war. To see you to safety. To ensure that you found... happiness, someday.”

His breath caught and he just froze with an utterly inexplicable feeling of imminent danger. He could tell that whatever was coming was going to be bad. Bad enough to put those shadows inside the boy's bright eyes. Bad enough to bring the small hairs at the back of his neck into a standing position.

“Task? What task?... Can't you see that you are making no sense, Harry?. Sirius Black would have never ordered his elf to look after me!”

Harry's saddened little snort touched something truly vulnerable within him. He now knew that he had failed to understand something quite crucial, although what that might be he couldn't even begin to imagine. He was certain, though, that he was disappointing the child somehow. Disappointing him very deeply...

“You don't know, do you?. I always suspected that you didn't, but... Once I pieced it all together everything was so obvious that I couldn't explain to myself how it's possible that you didn't see it... he left clues everywhere. In his diary, in his books, in a thousand and one essays that you helped him correct and he could never bring himself to throw away... I think everyone in the slytherin dorms must have known!. Sirius certainly did. That's why his hatred of you doubled after your third year...”

“Everyone knew what, Harry?. Whatever it is you've got to say just... go ahead and say it, for Salazar's sake!. My head is already spinning, trying to follow this crazy conversation. I think you should just... take a deep breath and spill out your little tale all in one go.”

Wretched silence ensued as Harry sighed. His hands came up to rub the whole of his face harshly and he seemed to brace himself as if for impact.

Finally those green eyes settled over him with so much pity that his heart froze in his chest and his breath hitched.

“You are right, of course, Severus. I just... This is going to be so hard for me... I don't ever want to speak about him, or her, ever again, please!. Not after this...”

A heavy lump settled in his stomach. One so huge, so cold, so bitter, that it forced his very guts into tight knots.

“Her? Is this about your mother?”

“Not really. No. But it is about you. About the way you felt towards her. About something that you said a million years ago to your friend Lucius Malfoy. Let me just...

OK, I already told you that Kreacher died soon after the staff at St Mungo's decided to wash their hands off you. What he never found out was that Draco refused point-blank to allow them to stop your heart from beating. He took you off the hospital, directly into his father's bloody mansion, and refused to let anybody near you.

By then I was already dealing with the idea that you... you had never been the scoundrel I thought I knew. I was trying to come to terms with my new perception of you. I was already wrestling with the suspicion that the man I was beginning to glimpse, through every little piece of evidence that was coming out in support of your position as a spy for the Order, was someone who could blow my mind away. A man I'd love to meet. A man worthy of... everything...

Long story short, by the time I came around to clean the little cubicle where Kreacher used to live it was months after he died. I found something that he'd kept for a long time, his most precious treasure. It was a small purple colored bottle made of thick glass. He had labeled it in his own, almost illegible, hand-writing with the very mysterious label of “The master's heart”.

It picked my curiosity so badly... I was bored and I was alone and I just... wanted to snoop, I suppose.

There was memory inside that bottle, Severus. A memory that once belonged to Regulus Black. A memory about you.

He must have been a second or third year by the look of him. And you... you were wearing a prefect's badge... so, I'd say it must have been either your fifth or sixth year at Hogwarts.

You and Malfoy were talking in the boy's dormitories. There was no one else around and he was trying to heal some cuts on your face from a fight that you had with my father...”

“I don't recall any of this...”

“Let me finish!. Malfoy was furious with you. He was telling you that all your troubles with the Gryffindors could be over, if you'd only step back from your friendship with my mum. He was screaming at you, actually. Asking you why couldn't you see that one day she'd be my father's, anyway. He told you that it was clear as water that my father's hatred for you would force him to demand that she choose between the two of you”

Black eyes lit with a sudden recognition.

“I remember this. But... Regulus wasn't there, Harry.”

The auror shot him a look about as fierce as a tiger's.

“Yes, he was!. He was hiding under the bed, because you guys almost caught him stealing from Knot's chocolate-frog stash. Do you remember what you told Malfoy then?. You admitted that you knew she'd eventually abandon you. That there was never any chance of you ever winning in a battle of charm against James Potter.

You told him that you would ride that train to it's bitter end, regardless, because you had no other option. You said that when you are ugly and ill-tempered and a right bastard to boot you have to love the way the odd muggle poet put it. That's when you said it, Severus... You quoted the words of an American muggle at Malfoy. Do you remember who it was? Do you remember what you said?”

He was truly discomfited now. He remembered this conversation only vaguely. Was aware that he'd been a right pain in the arse back in those days. Trapped, as he'd been, within the throes of an emotion far too strong to be contained within the flimsy walls of his scrawny little chest, and way too deep to be abandoned or forgotten.

He'd loved her like the desperate loves hope. Because, from all the objects of affection he'd ever chosen, she'd been the kindest to him. The loyalest. The one to never, ever, refer to his horrendous physical inadequacies in any shape or form....

“I'd like to abandon this particular conversation here, Harry. Whatever it is you've got to say, I'm certain that you can find a way to express yourself without raking up the past. Pursuing this will hurt us both...” He tried to kill the conversation right there, lest he die of sheer embarrassment if the auror forged ahead. But the boy, stubborn as he was, ignored him completely and carried on:

“You recited a verse from an untitled poem written by a man named cummings. Took me months to trace back the few sentences that you spoke to an actual poem, but I managed to do it:

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness... Do you remember that, Severus?”

He swallowed with horrified recognition of the one poem his mother used to whisper under her breath again and again. Whenever his father hit her, whenever he'd leave the house and failed to return for days on end, whenever that muggle bastard had dared to call them both freaks for having the gift of magic, she'd hide behind the refuge of those despised words...

“I can't believe I ever used them myself...” He whispered into the expectant silence and felt like crumbling into tiny pieces of himself at the mere idea of accepting that he'd turned into his own mother for Lily...

“You told Malfoy that you could never let her know how you felt because you knew that she didn't see you in that kind of light. You said that you couldn't force yourself to abandon your own feelings, either, because you didn't need her to know about them for you to have them. To be loyal to them. To find joy in the knowledge that you loved a beautiful girl, even if she could never love you back...”

He was red enough to resemble the ripest of tomatoes. His hands trembled and his eyes, so black that they had turned into pools of spotless ink, were widened with humiliated anger.

“I was fifteen, Potter, for Merlin's sake!. I was a stupid romantic idiot, emoting over a girl who couldn't even see him... Surely I do not deserve being embarrassed to death by the idiocy I used to spout when I was still a child.”

The boy shook his head very slowly. Shattered green eyes stared straight at him with something terribly close to the most desperate, wretched kind of hurt:

“You don't understand anything... You weren't the only stupid romantic idiot in that room, Severus. Regulus... Regulus Black was right there. And so was I, as soon as I discovered that bloody bottle!. We were looking at you, from underneath the bed, as you pronounced those words and you did it with a face that was bloodied by a broken lip and about a dozen tiny cuts. You said them with an expression in your eyes that was as hard as stone. With that voice of yours already hinting at the strength that it would gain in only a few years...

You were, at that very second, the most magnificently romantic thing that we had ever seen, and we both fell hard for you right there and then. Only... he loved you in exactly the same way you loved her. Because, just like you, he'd also known from the very beginning that he could never have you and he was slytherin enough never to risk rocking that boat. He never managed to bring himself to confess his feelings for you, don't you see?.

He lived and died for you and you never even knew it!. It's one of the most terrible tragedies that I've ever witnessed. Regulus Black joined Voldermort because you did and then he attempted to stop that bastard, after he crucioed you for the very first time...

That image of you, reciting the wretched lines of that stupid poem with your face covered in blood, was his most precious memory. So precious, in fact, that he'd left it behind and his loyal elf kept it safe long after his death...

They both kept it in silence. Always... Always in silence. Hidden from your eyes, because that poor boy truly believed you when you told Lucius Malfoy that as long as you kept your love for Lily Evans hidden, like the voice under all silences, you could also keep the hope that knew no fear...

You said that as long as she never had cause to say no today, there'd always be the chance that she could say yes tomorrow. You could dare to dream and imagine that one day she might feel what you felt. One day she might turn towards you and bring you to life... The worst part of it is that your interpretation of that bloody poem is so painfully flawed that I cried like a young child when I finally found it, Severus”

His eyes burned with the horror of finding himself thus exposed. Of learning about the unforeseen repercussions of some ridiculously emotional outburst that he had when he was younger. He'd been so blind. So stupid... Thinking back now he could remember a million and one looks that Regulus Black had constantly bestowed upon him. He remembered the last one in particular. That heartbroken expression of deep sorrow that he'd received as he'd stumbled away from the frenzied orgy that had started when the boy allowed them all inside his brother's love nest in Hogsmeade...

“I never realized any of this...”

“You could have been happy, Severus. You could have spent years being cherished by a boy who cared for you enough to die trying to defend you. You could have learned that you were worth the effort, while there was still a chance for you to avoid going down the path that eventually led you to the Dark Lord.

You could have learned to smile and to trust in other people while there was still some innocence left in you. You could have been... just a boy, finding love for the first time, daring to sneak out at night for a naughty assignation in the astronomy tower. Finding out how it feels to see yourself through the eyes of another who actually adores you... You could have had it all, if only you had never said those words about love being the voice under all silences...”

The moment hung, like a teardrop from an eyelash. It shook and killed him with a sorrow that was threatening to destroy his very sanity. He felt sickened and guilty. He felt savaged by pity. He could not begin to... absorb... the abject horror that this unexpected revelation was causing him.

“I... I never knew...” He couldn't move past that thought. Couldn't react to anything other than the fact that he... he had influenced Regulus' life to such a level and he'd never, ever, guessed it.

“I... what is it that you want me to do with this knowledge?. Why did you have to tell me such thing?. Don't you see that none of this changes anything, Harry?”

“Severus... You've got to look at me. Look at me!. Of course this changes something!. It changes everything. I refuse to let you live like that again. I refuse to let you hide behind that sentence.

This thing with the article... it's more of the same, don't you see?. You want me to behave like Regulus did, like yourself... You want me to give up fighting for you and... cower... like a mouse, in my little dark corner, just because bloody Rita Skeeter decided to earn a bunch of extra-galleons writing a pack of lies for the Sunday edition.

Well... I do love you and I refuse to keep quiet about it. I won't do it!. Not even to keep the flimsy hope that you might, one day, come to feel the same emotions. The prophet can print all it wants. The whole world can call me a loser. They can laugh until they are all hoarse from it, for all I care!. But you... you are going to learn that life doesn't belong to those who won't dare to confront it. Silence belongs to the dead and to the cowards, Severus. It belongs to the traitors and the liars. It belongs somewhere you don't belong!.

You are neither dead nor a coward. You are the bravest man I know!. You've got to learn to speak out loud. To have some faith in both, yourself and others.

You can have love. You can have friendship. You can have honor and respect, devotion, truth, even adoration... You can have anything and everything you dare to reach out for. I'm here to make sure that you have a shot at getting all of that and more, Severus. I swear that I'll give you anything that you desire, anything!. The one thing you can not have is silence, though. Not from me, at least. Silence is the one thing that you don't actually deserve...”

He blinked at the boy with a shocked kind of befuddlement. He didn't know if they were talking about Lily or Regulus or he, himself, any longer. He didn't know if they were talking about friendship or love or life in general. He didn't know how he felt about any of this. Or what the boy actually expected him to... do.

“What does that mean Harry? I... I'm afraid that I still don't understand what it is, exactly, that you are trying to tell me”

The gryffindor stalked closer then. A tanned hand fell over the newspaper and ripped the front page off with a sharp, ferocious motion. The parchment crumpled under the destructive strength of Harry's slowly closing fist with a loud rustle and he couldn't take his eyes away from the veritable storm of unyielding resolution that was flashing emerald fire from within that determined young gaze.

“This means that we are going out to lunch. Today. To Diagon Alley, Severus. It means that our friendship is finally coming out of Hogwarts, and to Hell with anyone who dares to question it!. It means that your time for hiding in here and attempt to keep us stashed away among the shadows of this office, like some kind of dark and shameful little secret, has come to an end.

We are going back to the bookstores and the theater, wizarding ones this time. We are going to find somewhere nice and quiet where I can take you dancing. Because you actually love to dance, don't you?... This means that we are going to stop being friends only in private. We are going to do this out into the open. We are friends. We've got nothing to hide. You have every right in the world to get a life that has nothing at all to do with this school, and whoever doesn't like it can very well go jump off a bridge for all I care!...”

TBC...

A/N * Finis Cor roughly translates as to stop the heart.

  

Ch31

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