The voice under all silences. Chapter 7

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 7

He regained consciousness to the miserable experience of finding Harry bloody Potter at his bedside. Those myopic emerald eyes were the first thing that he saw when his lids finally parted and, unsettled right down to his very bones, it took him almost a full 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 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 that they were both so very carefully NOT talking about attempting to become living, breathing, murderous entities within the oppressively silent walls that held them both 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 very easily lead him straight towards 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 finally offered that insincere apology 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 that were alive with caution raked his pale face and Lily's child smiled tightly at him.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Severus"

He blinked very slowly, trying to veil his confused sense of unease from that steady gaze. He wondered what was it that Potter wanted from him, exactly. Was it terror?. Was it plain, simple submission?. Was it some kind of twisted mixture of those two emotions? He had no clue at all. No way to find out for sure or even take any kind of wild guess, based on what he'd known of the child before the war. He only knew 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. He would do anything for Draco... But he was at a loss here. 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 after he'd dozed off. 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 and his neck hurt all the harder when his head turned abruptly back towards the cold-eyed auror that now sat, as rigid as a post, in the bedside chair. Potter shot him a look that was as sharp and lethal as a poisoned dagger. It was a look that he'd have never believed the boy could even produce, had he not been witnessing it with his very own eyes.

"Lucius is here?" He croaked uncertainly, feeling completely at sea as to how to behave. How to speak to the monster before him. How to react to the words the boy was uttering, 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 terrorize poor Jones, as far as I'm aware. Him and his bloody son, both, haven't left the place since you re-gained consciousness. I'm sure they'll be here in a flash once

they find out that you are finally awake, so there's no need for you to worry that they've abandoned you"

His whole body betrayed him by sagging in utter relief upon hearing those assertions, and he found himself on the receiving end of the most thunderous scowl once again.

"I'm doing what you wanted, Potter!. I'm playing nice to you while you accost me in my sick bed, like the very Specter of Death. Now it's time for you to do your own part. 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 behavior the man was showing every single time Draco was mentioned.

Those flawed copies of Lily's eyes blinked and the youth's golden features convulsed into absolute fury when the little jerk snapped back:

"Then stop worrying so much about that bastard. It's driving me insane!'

Obsidian colored irises widened with shock. With absolutely appalled bewilderment. With utter incomprehension.

"How can I do such a thing?. He is here, YOU are here. There is nothing that 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 into clammy sweat as his throat muscles attempted to cramp. The simple act of breathing become slowly more difficult as his traitorous body dared to respond to the awful pain. In an effort to calm himself he closed his dark eyes and 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 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, muscular chest and a veritable tempest of dangerously angry blue sparks began to appear all over the protective surface of the healing ward that had been set over the limb. 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 mean 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. He knew that he was chocking and his throat started to strain as he began to hack loudly, fighting to inhale dismally decreasing amounts of seemingly thickened air.

Potter sat at the edge of his chair like a lump made out of stone. He seemed to have been petrified, hexed into utter stillness. Frozen to the spot... After a second or two the boy exhaled in a rush and shook that wild head of his fiercely, trembling fingers curled closed into a pair of frightening fists that settled over his thighs a mere blink before he spoke:

"Look at me, Severus!"

It was a command. A fiercely whispered, strangely compelling, curiously desperate order that had been issued in the most strained of voices and Severus 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 that were rigid with anxiety offered him a vision of stubbornly focused determination and a mouth that was neither a copy of James' nor of Lily's, but a curious mixture of the two, opened to shape the next few words coaxingly:

"Breathe... Hold on for a second and try to 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. He listened to the boy's words with all of his consciousness. Attempted to block off the excruciating discomfort that was 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 slowly, so very slowly... Time elapsed, 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 and those slightly moistened, half-opened lips guiding the responses of his own constricted chest...

One difficult breath became another until a blink from those eyes offered him a welcome respite from the strange, urgent intensity with which they were holding his own captive... He felt trapped by those eyes and so lost that he panicked. He could not understand what was happening between them 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 lowered, like shields, against the boy. But Potter... Potter was merciless.

"Look at me!" He was ordered again to confront that bright green gaze with a gruffly growled command that fell across his reeling senses with the lethal efficiency of a deathly boxer's punch, one that was being directly aimed towards his frayed mind. Towards his dismayed recollection of a gaze just like this one... His sooty lashes fluttered unwillingly apart. Black depths cracked opened, became unwillingly exposed to unwelcome light. Made vulnerable by the most distressed fear that they had ever shown or held before another, revealing an entire world of alarmed unease as their owner stared with riveted attention straight into a veritable storm of emerald-green emotions.

"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 the fact 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 that was trying to force him into the most cowardly mutism...

The awful moment stretched and turned heavier as those merciless green eyes held his own captive within 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 beg like a worthless scoundrel for the permission that he now seemed to need to close his very own eyes...

"Please..." He repeated pathetically, but knew not how to express himself further. He needed their strange connection broken to end this... madness. He could not, would not submit himself to the terrible danger inherent in the gentleness with which the boy had dared to address him. He would not surrender himself to the green-tinged fever that was burning, so brightly, inside those eyes. He needed to retreat completely from the strange energy of this moment. He needed to escape this situation. Forget it. Erase it from his mind altogether...

"Please what, Severus?"

Potter's tone was still gentle, soothing. That gaze held him like a thin thread holds a kite and he found himself swallowing uneasily. His heart pounded 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 and when a calloused palm curled in a sickeningly tender caress around his right cheekbone he could not keep the desperation to retreat locked in any longer.

" Let me... I need... You must allow me to close my eyes, please...”

Young, pale lips smiled so sadly that they broke him and a thousand memories of Lily swirled within his mind, like jagged pieces of glass.

"Why?. Does looking at me hurt you, Severus?. I wonder what you see when your eyes settle on me... Not her, though, or you'd have never managed to fool any of us..."

He blinked at 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 again..."

There was such 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 that the Dark Lord himself had ever hissed in his presence.

"I do not understand..."

A soft, rueful chuckle met his shamefully meek confession. He prayed with all his might for the bed to be engulfed by a wayward vanishing spell and was, as usual, 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, heavy silence that followed.

He pulled his gaze off those defeated-looking features, blinking dazedly away as a myriad of tangled thoughts attempted to stampede throughout his exhausted mind. His right hand rose to cradle the still glittering length of his wounded arm gently and he lowered his ebony eyes, focusing them blindly 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, that one unwise decision that had cost him already more than any other: His own magic. His whole magic, so pointlessly 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 upon the mattress and a hand shot out towards him, merciless fingers curled firmly around his chin and tugged upwards. 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, Severus!. 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 that 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. His ebony gaze shot 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 onto 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 colored 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 from those lips, followed by a quiet, awed chuckle.

"You could feel the intention of the magic?. Wow... That's just... I don't know. It's Awesome!"

He just... reeled. He seemed to be unable to do anything other than sit 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 though... as though it found the existence of some kind of... regard... between us! "

The irritating whelp shook that headache-inducing nest of madness that he called hair from side to side.

"Amazing... I didn't even know that it was possible to sense the intention of a spell"

His jaw locked with the familiar angry frustration that had always followed his every interaction with Potter in the past.

"Would you listen to yourself, boy?. Intention is the most important aspect of all magic!. It's 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 analyzed based on the primary emotion that drove it's caster..."

Green eyes turned sombre as they registered his utmost agitation. Golden features softened 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 that were behind them and adjusted itself to them instead, regardless of our words..."

He froze. Whole mind descending into the realms of utter incredulity as the implications of that carelessly flung comment opened before him possibilities that 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 repeat my demands aloud"

A pale blue-tinted vein began to throb visibly on his temple. His jaw locked, his teeth gritted and his hands closed into fists:

"What. Intentions. Potter?" He repeated the same question in a frosty and deadly tone. A black, unfathomable anger began to rise within his chest like molten lava.

"You wanted to be punished, Severus, but that was only you, I... I wanted something else entirely. Something that you were very obviously never going to volunteer of your own free will, so I... 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. You must have desired to hear it with all of your heart or the potion would have never taken me down that road..."

He felt cold all of a sudden. Frozen down to the very last cell contained within his body as he recalled that last, ghastly conversation that they had shared. He remembered the boy's witless babbling and

the fight that had ensued between them, culminating with the awful implication that he might had been suicidal during the last hours of the Final Battle:

“ You. Wanted. To. Die. Just. Like. She. Did!” The auror had screamed that 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 away from those rose-tainted lips like a whispered plea:

"Severus, I didn't know that it would take me down that path!. I had used it before, you see?... and it wasn't quite that vicious. I just 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 at that moment. He felt utter abhorrence. Dislike. He wanted to kill the bastard with such intensity that his mind shorted. Every muscle he possessed clenched with the need to harm the boy. He desired to break him!. Bring him to the same horrifyingly humiliating position that 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 bring his whole head into a brutal, 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 that it took the auror to realize that he had triggered the ward that protected his broken arm. Potter released him jerkily then, as carelessly as he'd seized him in the first place, and now bereft of both, his own meager strength and the unwilling support of the profusely bleeding gryffindor, Severus' 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...

 

TBC...

Ch6

Ch8