The voice under all silences. Chapter 33

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 33. 

Severus gazed at the foyer of the movie theater in dazed wonderment. He'd come to a sudden halt barely five steps into the building and now stood gawking stupidly around himself with what he suspected must look very much like gauche imbecility.

Far from being understandably cross with his unseemly behavior, Harry smiled delightedly at him. The boy seemed to be perfectly happy doing absolutely nothing other than standing next to him while he gazed around moronically. The gryffindor was going as far as to chuckle under his breath in perfectly irritating self-satisfaction.

"Look at you!. I knew you'll love this. But even I didn't expect to leave you speechless, Severus"

He was too impressed with the place to bother with the kind of cutting retort that such impertinent little comment truly deserved, so he ignored the boy regally. His eyes roamed over the high ceiling and the gleaming floor, taking in the life sized cardboard cut-outs of various images that went from the perfectly ordinary to the astonishingly bizarre... There were colored tube-lights everywhere and TV screens hung from the roof, showing intriguing spinets of various films. The whole place looked so out of the ordinary, so removed from all the other muggle establishments that he'd ever visited, that he could not shake the sense of unreality that clung to his perfectly astounded mind.

Harry's hand grabbed his elbow suddenly, steering him away from the path of a very harassed father and his two arguing children, as they almost bowled them over in their apparent eagerness to reach a long counter that was filled to the brim with brightly wrapped bags of what he assumed to be muggle candy. He was busily studying the bizarrely shaped drink dispenser when his companion's impatient nudge to the small of his back forced him to turn his head and frown at the boy impatiently.

"What is it?"

Laughing green eyes rolled good-naturedly as the auror regally ignored the slight sharpness of his tone.

"I can't believe you haven't noticed it yet, Severus!. I've been imagining the look on your face all week long, and now you are making me wait because you are inexplicably intrigued by the bloody buttons of the soda fountain..."

His frown deepened as he attempted to decipher that perfectly puzzling complaint. He could not understand what it meant but he suddenly realized that the boy had steered him purposely towards the large counter, instead of proceeding to walk in the opposite direction, where a man stood guarding what appeared to be the entrance to the show-rooms.

Now that he thought about it there was a veritable crowd of people hovering around this area. Harry seemed to be about to explode with the kind of impatient exuberance of a child about to unveil a great surprise. His eyes were bright and exited, his lips curved into a great, pleased smile and his hand tapped constantly on the side of his thigh, in a very telling nervous gesture that Severus hadn't noticed before.

With his curiosity thoroughly piqued now, he allowed his dark eyes to sweep the whole surrounding area once again, taking in the orderly line of people waiting at the candy counter and marveling anew at the childishness of the muggles. How could these many adults be still hooked on the questionable delights of candy?. It was then that the customer at the very front of the cue moved away from the line carrying with her a gigantic tub filled to the brim with...

"Is that popcorn?" He could not hide the perplexed longing from his voice as his eyes, round with gob-smacked disbelief, followed that muggle as if entranced.

Potter laughed beside him.

"Finally!" The boy whispered delightedly and Severus simply ignored him in order to take a couple of dazed steps towards that orderly line of people. The heavenly smell of the popped corn filled his nostrils as he approached and he inhaled it with relish, giving himself over to his almost instinctive need to sniff the air, like a dog smells a tree, and realizing that he was perfectly unable to understand how it was possible that he hadn't noticed it before...

He forgot the noise around him and the intriguingly mysterious inner workings of the muggle soda fountain that had enthralled him so a mere second ago. He forgot that he stood in a muggle theater, carefully attired with the flimsy and strange clothing that all muggles preferred. He forgot that the film that Harry had dragged him out to watch was scheduled to start at any second. He forgot Harry altogether...

Ebony colored eyes settled on the gigantic box, filled to the brim with white puffs of popped corn, from were the busy attendants were scooping out the astonishingly large amounts that every tub could carry. His gaze followed each costumer along the line with the kind of wishful longing of a small child who stood, quietly and utterly enthralled, just outside a toy-store's brightly lit window. He was so totally consumed with his almost dazed contemplation of that wonderful machine that he wasn't even aware of his own almost forlorn sigh of longing, until Harry's hand grabbed his own again.

"Severus?" The sheer amusement that was coloring the gryffindor's voice was unmistakable and he found, to his astonishment, that it didn't really bother him all that much. At least not right at that second.

Forcing himself to pull his gaze away from the coveted popped treat that was being so very liberally dispensed less than eight feet away from where they were standing he attempted to ignore the blissful smell that surrounded them. Attempted to forget the fact that he hadn't had popcorn since before he'd abandoned the boy's flat for the last time... Attempted to convince his suddenly dejected mind of the fact that he hadn't missed all those evenings spent curled on the sofa with that ridiculous yellow plastic bowl in his lap and Potter's giggling form snuggled against his side...

Harry smiled sweetly at him, face alight with the kind of affection that he seemed to be absolutely unable or, more likely, simply unwilling to ever hide. There was such a look of patient understanding clearly written in those features that it finally dawned on him just how much this man actually knew about him. About his likes and dislikes. About his nightmares and dreams. About his fears.

His chest froze with the sudden awareness that this man... this man had brought him here on purpose. He'd been waiting to see his reaction to the popcorn... The auror may have even wanted to... indulge him... with this outing, give him something to... replace... the treasured memory of those evenings that they used to share together.

"You are going to tell me that I can have the popcorn. Are you not, Harry?. You've probably been planning on getting it for me all along..."

Gentle fingers pushed a long lock of his dark hair behind his ear and he felt himself in danger. He feared that he could easily drown within the depths of the profound devotion that was flashing like a beacon across those gorgeous emerald eyes.

"It always surprises me how your very first assumption about anything is to imagine that it isn't meant for you, Severus. Of course I meant to buy it. Of course I wanted this to be a wonderful surprise... Of course you can have as much popcorn as that flat stomach of yours can possibly take!. Why else would I have dragged you out here for?. I do know that you are not particularly that keen on the movies themselves."

He was frightened by the power of the emotion that swept him from head to toes then. It was gratefulness, yes. But it was also... joy. It was hope and it was trust and it was happiness, too.

He had never had someone do this for him. He'd lived his life in a bubble of loneliness and duty. Of orderly restraint. Of austere self-denial.

He'd very rarely indulged in anything other than books. Never allowed himself to splurge on a vacation. Or a dinner out of Hogwarts. Never allowed himself to relax enough to enjoy anyone's half-hearted attempts at befriending him.

He'd existed in a kind of hopeless vacuum until his almost-death and had awoken expecting very much the same fate of honor-bound responsibility towards his peers, towards his students and the wizarding world in general to trap him once again into the kind of existence that had never made him happy or even merely content...

His eyes burned with irrational emotion and he swallowed the huge lump that had lodged in his throat and was threatening to suffocate him with visibly effort. He was well past overwhelmed by his very strong reaction to the whole situation and he feared that he was about to embarrass the both of them, unless he managed to bring himself under control.

For the very first time he understood that they were probably more than friends already. Because he was sure as hell that he'd never shared this with either Luc or Cissy. Albus had been all about fatherly advice and ruthless demands to give more of himself, and of his time, to the cause that had consumed them both and Minnie... Minnie was, in many ways, as stiff as he himself felt most of the time.

Draco loved him beyond all doubts, but he did so with the affection of a son. They counted on each other. They defended one another. They did share a great number of things, but they did so from a structure of father and child, of godparent and godson. Of mentor and pupil...

Harry had been trying all along to relate to him as his equal in all things. As one man facing another. As a... companion.

"I... I need to thank you, Harry..." He finally whispered in a tone that wobbled with sheer tension.

The emerald eyes that had been focused intently on his paling face frowned with obvious concern.

"It's only popcorn, Severus..."

His cowardly mind latched onto that opening that the child had, so unwittingly, given him. He could retreat in this instant. Retract his intended meaning and behave as if he'd never dared to voice aloud his thoughts. He could allow Harry to move forwards, join the muggle queue in search of his treat and then suffer through the ordeal of this film, knowing that he'd let another chance to be sincere about who he was and what he felt pass him by...

He didn't feel like keeping quiet, though. Keeping safe had never felt quite so unappealing to his senses. He wanted to put an end to his own self-destructive behavior. That ingrained need he felt of breaking his own heart slowly, through a million little daily doses of constant self-denial, all of it rooted on the fact that he... he feared the possibility of hurtful rejection more than he'd ever feared the Dark Lord himself.

He wanted to be as brave as Albus had once told him that he was. He wanted to be... worthy... of Harry's care. Of Harry's time. Of Harry's stubborn courage. He wanted to reach out once more and see if this man could catch him this time, too. Bring him back to safety before he managed to shatter his own brittle, fragile self against the ground...

His pale fingers clamped around the boy's golden wrist so fiercely that he knew that he'd leave marks. He felt faint with a breathless kind of awful trepidation as he forced his own gaze to unveil the thick swirl of overwhelming longing that was wreaking the very worst kind of chaos within his psyche.

Whatever his eyes revealed made the gryffindor gasp aloud with something so very close to actual protectiveness that Severus understood, without another single word needing to be pronounced, that he'd chosen his champion with far better taste this time. Where Lily had failed him in the past, leaving him empty and utterly desolate, her son was going to pull through, filling his every broken space with golden sunlight...

"I'm not talking about the popcorn, Harry. I'm talking about myself. I... I need to thank you for forcing me back here. To this life that I never expected to lead. I want you to understand that I... I've come to value you more than you shall ever know. You've given me more patience than I possibly deserve and I... I feel as if I shouldn't let another second pass without letting you realize that I am grateful for the fact that you've never given up on me, despite my bullheaded efforts to convince you to do exactly that. I'm pretty sure that I'm not worthy of your unwavering affection, but I... I'm selfish enough to want it, anyway."

A thin film of flimsy tears seemed to coat the ethereal beauty of those green eyes in the next second and, although Harry smiled at him sunnily enough, he looked choked and overwhelmed. Nervous. Hopeful. Happy and grateful, both, and also quietly contented.

"You are welcome, Severus" The boy whispered, gruffly. A wide, tanned hand rose in a wobbly arch to give a heartfelt press to his left shoulder before the gryffindor turned around abruptly and walked briskly towards the queue.

Severus watched him go with a sense of anxious agitation. Of powerful confusion. Of hope-filled wonder. He felt poised at the very brink of a cliff that could either make him or break him, if he so much as placed a foot in the wrong place.

He was fearful of what tomorrow might bring in a way that he'd never felt before. He was wary, but he felt also exultant. He felt truly alive for the very first time since the soul-destroying days of his own youth. He was beginning to believe in the possibility that the rest of his life could be filled with joy and brightness. With... with this. Whatever this might end up being...

He was loath to turn back and hide once more within the empty shell that he'd inhabited for so long. He didn't know if he was truly strong enough to take the fall for this, if the need for doing so ever arose. But he felt at least brave enough to try reaching for it. To take this chance.

Harry returned to him with a huge tub of popcorn in one hand and a plastic cup of soda in the other. His heart hammered in his chest as he accepted his treat with a new kind of nervousness tangling his tensing stomach into a million knots of half-formed expectations. As if sensing his anxiety the auror's hand hovered near his chin for half a minute, guiding his own black gaze into a straight collision with the darkened green one.

"We will do this at your own pace, Severus. To the extension and the depth that you decide on... I want everything from you that you can give me. I don't care if it's just friendship, or platonic companionship, or even some kind of mixture of those two. You only have to bring yourself to the point of... demanding... whatever it is that you feel you need and I will move Heaven and Earth to try and give that to you without pushing for more.

If you think that you must thank me for not giving up on you, then... I must also thank you in return.

Thank you, for being brave enough to risk your trust on me. There's nothing in the world that I could value higher. There's nothing else that could bring me this much joy. You are... everything to me, and I am so terrified that I might spook you again with my stupid behavior, that I can barely think straight half of the time. Promise me you'll kick me on the shin if I annoy you too much. Please?... Don't let me ruin this thing that we have found. Don't let me frighten you, ever again, to the point were you really feel that the only way to guarantee your safety is to apparate yourself far away from me..."

His brain shorted on the receiving end of that heartfelt plea and he found himself floundering for an appropriate answer. He didn't actually know how to react. How to behave. How to... demand or even acknowledge that he needed a reprieve from this truly disorienting see-saw of emotions. He was dizzy with sheer nerves and needed some breathing space for a little while. He needed to think. He needed to retreat. Regroup. Calm down...

"I... I think we should find our seats, Harry. All this popcorn won't eat itself and you are just... keeping me from it with all this talk" He managed to choke out eventually, feeling panicked that he'd failed to explain himself correctly. Trembling with the horrifying suspicion that he'd said the wrong thing, come across as a disdainful bastard and alienated his companion beyond forgiveness.

His palms broke into anxious sweat for the brief second it took the gryffindor to look into his own dark gaze questioningly and smile gently at him.

Green eyes rolled as a trembling hand forced the drink up to the auror's lips for a rather abrupt gulp of whatever liquid it contained.

"OK. I get it. I'll shut up now. Let it never be said that I stood between the Greatest Hero, himself, and his giant tub of popcorn... I think your fans might crucio me, in retaliation, if I make you wait for your treat any longer."

That troubling statement made him falter in his progress across the huge hall and he turned horrified black eyes to his companion.

"That is not even remotely funny, Potter!" He growled, squirming with uncomfortable self-awareness.

Harry ignored him completely and curled a daring hand around his elbow, tugging him forwards.

"Relax, will you?. If anyone had told me, while I was at Hogwarts, that having your own group of crazy fans could make you shake like a newborn calf, I'd have laughed them out the door without a second thought.

There's no reason to be wary. Most of them are perfectly harmless, you know?. They'll collect pictures of you from the prophet and send you a couple of letters a year... Nothing more sinister than that."

The discomfiting topic was dropped as they reached the attendant and gave the man their tickets. Entrance to the corridor that opened immediately behind the podium-like collection spot was granted to them and they both walked along the dimly-lit route being pointed out to them by a glowing array of arrows.

The silence was a bit strained, but companionable and Severus had a second to be thankful that the nature of the place demanded silence for the next hour and a half at least. Harry reached the door they were searching for first, and opened it quietly. He stood back, waiting for Severus to cross first, and then resumed his previous position beside him.

The room was much bigger than he'd expected and the size of the screen was just... incredible. He stared straight at it with something so akin to floored disbelief that the boy chuckled once again under his breath.

"You've done this on purpose!" Severus hissed as the child guided him through the barely lit room towards a couple of seats at the left hand corner of the farthest row.

Finally deciding to sit down Harry gazed up at him curiously.

"I've done plenty of things on purpose today, Severus. You must be more specific than that if you want me to acknowledge whatever point you are trying to make."

"I've been gaping around, like an absolute fool, all afternoon long..." He growled in disgruntled vexation as he took his own seat. The place was mostly empty, allowing them the freedom of whispering into each other's ears without worry that they might be overheard.

"Why do you always worry so much about looking less than knowledgeable? Is not as if there's anyone alive who can honestly claim to know it all, you know?. There's nothing wrong with you still having innocence enough to marvel at something new, Severus. I enjoy seeing you like this. I enjoy watching the way your eyes lit with possibilities and wondering what it is that you really think about the things that I show you. I want to be the one to give you all of these new experiences, so that I can claim ownership to them.

You might share a whole world of dark years with Malfoy, a veritable mountain of tales about student's stupidity with most of your colleagues, a million and one tales of unintelligible potions expertise with Draco, but this... This is mine!. This is what we do together. It's what belongs to us and us alone. What none of the others can ever share with you, because they are not a part of it.”

He sat frozen in his seat. Tub of corn perched daintily on his lap and dark eyes widened with a kind of startled awareness.

"That's rather... possessive, Potter." He managed to voice the one thought that was filling his whole head with all kinds of confusing reactions.

Wide athletic shoulders simply shrugged, in almost dizzying unconcern.

"That's the way I feel about it. I'm not going to apologize for that, Severus. And drop the Potter, will you? It's kind of disconcerting to hear you using it again, after you've finally decided to drop it"

The short silence that ensued was quite... perplexing. There was no tension between them, but there was something very much like it filling the empty space around them slowly, like an invisible cloud laced with some kind of sensory-enhancing potion.

He was gripped by the most strange urge to get back on to his feet and ran away. He desired to succumb to his own panic with such strength that he had to physically anchor himself into place by holding onto the padded armrests of his seat until his knuckles turned white.

Beside him Potter sighed with a weariness that rattled him even further and he prayed for the bloody film to start playing already, so that the moment would ease without any further... awkwardness.

The gryffindor though, being as thickheaded as any man could be and twice as reckless too, proceeded to plonk his hand over Severus' own and, literally, peeled his clawed digits off the armrest before daring to... intertwine both their hands together.

He was so startled by that action that he tried to jerk his wrist away. Finding the foreign hand quite impossible to dislodge, as it clutched him more firmly in response. Unfathomable ebony colored eyes focused on the determined features of this man who held him tightly.

"Potter... What on Earth do you think you are doing?" He hissed darkly, once he'd finally realized that the auror had no intention of letting his hand go.

Huge green eyes searched his narrow face with a seriousness that unnerved him.

"You are becoming agitated. You were gripping the poor seat as if it's personally responsible for all the evils of this world. I believe that you are over-thinking things too much, as usual, and spooking yourself into an actual anxiety attack. Am I even close, Severus?"

He was shocked by the accuracy of that insight. He was reeling with the disturbingly opposing needs to... deny all of it with as much fervor as he could possibly muster, before getting to his feet and returning to the safety of Hogwarts, posthaste, under the guise of a fit of pique. Or the even more baffling longing to just... allow his neck to bend, dropping his aching forehead onto Harry's wide shoulder, and lean onto the man's quiet strength until his own returned...

His pale lips trembled with the indecision of not knowing which of those responses to choose and the moment stretched into an eternity of silent staring that trapped him, trapped them, into a bubble that enclosed them together. Separating them completely from the world outside of it.

The lights dimmed even further and a thunderous burst of music blared around the room. Severus jumped in his seat, utterly spooked, and the brat clasped his fingers in a clearly reassuring gesture.

Images flashed across the huge screen and the link between their gazes broke as they both turned. Harry settled against the backrest of his seat, dragging their clasped hands with him and placing them carefully over the too-warm spot at the top of his thigh.

Severus was stiff with plain discomfort. He could not relax enough to just... let go!. The very contact between his own pale skin and the other man's clothed leg was so utterly alien to him, so very disturbing, that he felt as if he'd faint from sheer anxiety.

After a few excruciating minutes of enduring such torture in silence he inclined his head minutely to the side and fairly begged in the boy's ear:

"Harry... you've got to let my hand go!. Please..."

Those tanned fingers twitched very slightly before releasing him gently and he couldn't believe just how... easy that had been. He jerked his hand away hastily and was so shocked by the masculine chuckle that followed his panicked action that he lifted his dark head to frown peevishly at his companion.

"Don't look at me like that, Severus. It did the trick, didn't it?. You became so mad with me that you forgot to be scared altogether... Now why don't you stop huffing and enjoy your popcorn before I decide that you don't really want it all that much and start eating it myself?"

He was so relieved by the very welcome respite that the boy had so unexpectedly offered him that he didn't even question his own impulse and simply followed it through into startling action.

He mock growled in Harry's ear and pulled the tub of fluffy corn away with a sharp motion almost at the very same time that he warned in his best Death-eater tone:

"Don't you dare, Potter... or I'll have to teach you the kind of lesson that no man ever forgets!"

He hadn't realized how very suggestive the words would sound until he heard the auror's startled gasp and his eyes widened with utter mortification even as his whole face flushed with a violent red color.

"Oh, Merlin!... I'm so sorry... I shouldn't have said that... I..."

Harry came to his rescue by the very practical way of stuffing a handful of corn into his babbling mouth and he stilled, utterly astonished, for half a second. Their eyes clashed once again and they both giggled a bit hysterically until a peeved "sshhss!" interrupted their hilarity.

He ended up biting his lips rather forcefully to still the crazy mirth that had taken over his senses. Harry gazed at him brightly for a very long time, instead of focusing on the film, and all the blood in his veins began to pound with enough strength to make him breathless. His dark eyes shone with exhilarated joy. His thin lips smiled almost constantly as the seconds slowly turned into minutes and he concentrated on nothing else but the sheer pleasure of feeling that tender gaze fixed very firmly on him while he eat all of his popcorn in the darkened quiet of the muggle movie theater...

TBC...

  

Ch32

Ch34