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THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 8

He was totally fed up of losing consciousness every two seconds, like some kind of utterly Hufflepuffian heroine in a dreadfully Lockhart-ish melodrama.

-Belt up man!- He thought to himself as he came slowly back to the cold reality of full awareness: -It was only a little head-butt and you unraveled like a bloody lightweight!. Bella would have laughed you right out of the Lord's presence in a second with that kind of weakling performance...-

"Come on, Severus... I know that you are awake. Stop stalling and open those eyes of yours so that I may congratulate you on your excellent battle skills, my friend" That drawled interruption to his aggravated thoughts brought him up short.

He'd recognized the aristocratic voice at once, of course. Felt immediately at ease knowing that it's owner was so close, but had absolutely no intention of revealing himself conscious, in any shape or form, before he could ascertain the exact level of strength that he had re-gained and the position of that utter bastard, Potter!.

"Oh, For Merlin's sake!. He is not here right now, Severus. They've got him in a private room downstairs, suffering through a complete course of Skele-Gro because the damage that you caused to his nose, magic-less and half-dead as you are, my friend, could not be reversed with a simple Episkey like the one that was used to treat my own obviously totally pathetic effort, not five hours ago!"

His eyes shot open in total incredulity:

"You punched Potter?" His astonished blinking was enough to bring a sly smile to Luc's irritatingly attractive features.

"I agree that I would have caused far more damage with a wand, obviously. But you know them, Gryffindors, for all that supposedly undaunted courage that they can't stop boasting about they turn surprisingly Slytherin when they know they are in trouble. He accioed our wands the second Draco and I walked into the emergency room. Lacked the balls to tell us exactly what was wrong with you until he'd already disarmed us. "

There was a brief second of silence. Luc's cold gaze began to freeze, like the deathly waters of the Arctic ocean, when his eyes settled over the ward that was enveloping Severus' arm:

"Probably saved me from a rather long stint in Azkaban, that. I don't know what I would have done, had I still been in command of my magic, when he told us that he'd drained you"

Luc's patrician features twisted into a mask that reminded him suddenly of old Abraxas and that mad bastard had been unnervingly creepy, even in his good days...

Shivering uneasily in reaction to those memories he pondered Luc's frosty tone which, when coupled with the revealing clench of the blond's elegant fingers around that overly decorated wand-holder that he treasured so much, told Severus that there had been trouble indeed. Trouble with a capital T. Still... It was amazing. He couldn't actually imagine his prissily haughty friend willingly descending into the “distasteful disgrace of muggle fist-fights “ for any reason whatsoever, let alone in his behalf...

"You... You punched Potter?" He repeated the question stupidly and was brought right out of his astonished daze when the pale gray eyes narrowed into an aggravated sort of defensiveness that broke into irritated life with Luc's next comment:

"Yes, I did punch the mighty Savior himself. Not as effectively as your own flawless attempt, of course. But allow me to point out in my defense that I did what I could, considering... Muggle violence is just... Ewww!... I simply lack the words!"

Severus sighed. Half a minute of Luc's usual shenanigans and he was already tempted to jump right off a cliff.

"So Potter's out of the way... Good. Now maybe you can tell me what the Hell is going on, but first... I want to ask you a very important question, Lucius"

His friend inclined eagerly forward in the chair. Luminous silver eyes alert and solemn.

"Yes. Draco said that you'd need to. That you are still in war-mode. It's quite distressing to see, after all this time of peace. But then you've been... impervious... to it all for four long years"

Their eyes locked and he swallowed with difficulty. Unwillingly trapped, as he was, on the receiving end of a well of deep pity. There were many things that only Luc had ever dared to give him without having any fear of reprisals and genuine, sorrow-filled commiseration for his miserable luck in life had always been one of them.

The silence between them turned expectant. The very polished image of his aristocratic friend remained perched almost at the very edge of his seat, poised for imminent action.

The seconds stretched too long as his own mind grappled with the idea that, if this man proved himself to be the real Lucius... If there were neither apparent nor imagined plots against him being put into action by some still unidentified enemies, and Potter. Let's not forget Potter.., then he'd truly find himself at sea in this strange new world. Reality would cease to make any sense at all. His life as it had been, as he remembered it, would now become an obsolete set of memories, already left behind by those who surrounded him...

His throat closed with unease and he could not have found his voice for all the gold in Gringots.

"Oh, For Merlin's sake, Severus!. Stop that melodrama right this second, will you?..."

Luc's impatience came, as usual, to his rescue. Or to hinder his still floundering efforts even more. His friend tended to be a rather constant source of either mayor trouble or ringing success with wearying indiscrimination between both.

Long blond hair swung in a blinding arch of silver colored locks when their increasingly eager owner dragged himself, chair and all, even closer to the bed and that haughty and aristocratic voice that he'd known most of his life broke the tense silence without so much as a by-your-leave:

"How about this...? My pride and joy was relating his encounter with you this afternoon when I found myself very confused, indeed, by his reported answer to the question that you asked of him.

YOU, cunning old bastard that you are, told ME that the first potion you were going to teach him was the Fever-Reducer Philtre! "

-Oh, no!...- He recognized the dangerous quality of Luc's tone. Could tell that, any second now, he'd be accused of some incredibly ridiculous fault of his in the most irrational manner possible. He was frankly too exhausted to put up with any of it.

"Lucius..."

"I asked him to show me the results of his labors at the time and his confused look led me to believe that he had, somehow, flunked the potion!. Because of your irrationally paranoid nature, Severus Snape, I have spent more than a decade wrestling with the awful idea that my precious son failed most abjectly in his very first attempt to shine within the field of his choice!"

-Yep, his friend was in full drama-king mode...- Taking a deep breath he attempted again to still that enraged flow:

"Lucius..." And it proved to be an utter waste of energy, of course.

"I have tip-toed over the issue, like a chicken avoiding pebbles, ever since!. I have been teased, TEASED, mercilessly with Draco's supposed failure because I was so distraught at the time that I let the information slip within hearing of the most dreadfully jealous kind of hangers-on..."

His eye started to twitch with the very first hints of the headache that was approaching his poor, struggling mind at top speed. He attempted, once again, to halt the onslaught of Luc's depressingly long diatribe.

"Lucius... I'm sorry but I...”

"You are sorry? You. Are. Sorry?. You should be more than sorry, my friend. You should be absolutely devastated, at the very least!"

His teeth gritted and he took a single deep breath.

"You are behaving like a bloody bimbo again, Malfoy!" He attempted to use “The Growl” and only managed a shameful screech, but it didn't matter. He'd achieved what he wanted and now sombre, focused Lucius was back with a vengeance.

"THAT was totally uncalled for!"

Swallowing a bout of hiccuping, hysterical laughter he pointed out crossly:

"You were driving me insane!"

Luc's perfectly rosy lips compressed in indignation.

"My apologies, then. I seem to have forgotten just how unpleasantly grumpy you are when you wake up"

A peeved pause seemed to bring some sense of proportion to that twisted, aristocratic mind and Luc's very next words were offered with far less venom:

"I should have waited before berating you. You can't be feeling well enough to argue, in any case. You have been... greatly harmed, after all"

A lump the size of Hogwarts settled right over his throat and crushed it mercilessly. Black eyes blinked very slowly as he looked away. Silence was all that he could offer in answer to the uncomfortable acknowledgement that now... now he was nobody. A magic-less freak. A squib. A useless walking wounded...

The shield over his broken arm glimmered it's warning blue sparks when he banged the useless limb against the mattress in his clumsy attempt to raise himself into a seated position.

Haughty gray eyes looked on, from under narrowed pale lids, and their owner's tone turned gruff with unamused exasperation when he finally pointed out:

"You could have asked me to give you a hand, you know?. Just because you could achieve the same result if you struggle all by yourself, like some weird sort of one-armed, half-broken mound of sheer pride and crazy stubbornness doesn't mean that you have to, Severus. No one is going to think any less of you for allowing yourself to be helped every now and then."

He sagged against the mountain of pillows that covered the headboard. A thin layer of cold sweat was bathing his temple in response to the strain he'd just put his weakened muscles trough, but he ignored all of that for the moment. One ragged breath led to another and the silence grew into something that was not so... friendly and frustrated any longer. It wasn't merely uncomfortable, either. It had changed into that utterly blank nothingness of sudden and unwelcome realization.

"You are still uncertain, are you not?. You haven't called me Luc since you woke up..."

His jaw locked in obstinate refusal to feel guilty for his caution. Anyone could have polyjuiced themselves into Malfoy and entered this drattedly exposed room!.

"You chose the test, I can not trust it. There could be a million explanations as to how you knew the name of the first potion that I said I was going to teach to Draco."

There was a heartbeat of silence. It was cold and sad and filled to the brim with about a million memories of trickery.

"You think that I've come prepared... You believe that I'm an enemy. Your enemy."

Ebony colored eyes clashed with gray.

"I think that you are a very convincing Lucius Malfoy"

A chuckle fell between them then. It was rueful and caustic at the same time, a signature sound that was so Luc's that it brought goose-bumps to the skin on the back of his neck.

"Go ahead then, Severus. Choose your test."

The soft, crimson-tinged light of sunset that was coming in from the half-opened windows turned that platinum hair to silver thread. His eyes lost themselves in the very exquisite beauty of it. Unable, as he was, to sustain Luc's hard gray stare for a second longer...

"I remember something you said to me not long after you met Narcissa Black for the first time.

We coincided with her at Goyle's summer state. We've been invited with a bunch of other third years to Geoff's birthday party, I believe.

Narcissa was there. She'd been forced to accompany Bella for propriety's sake, because of the sheer amount of boys who'd been invited to that party...and she... she was doing something awful. She was running around barefooted and throwing the apples from the orchard at the old man's prized swans. Do you remember what you told me then?"

Luc's haughty expression turned soft with recollection. Silver shards of emotion flashed, like slowly melting diamonds, within his distinctive smoke-colored irises.

"It wasn't Goyle's party, Severus. It was Crabbe's. And she'd been throwing mud-shots at the birds, not apples. But she was barefooted. And laughing. I'd never seen something so carefree before...

I told you then that I'd marry her or no one. That a woman who could besmirch in such a manner the aching beauty of a white swan would not be enthralled so easily by my own.

I told you that I wanted to be... cherished... for something other than my outward appearance. I said that when the love a man inspires turns out to be only skin deep nothing on Earth can save it from destruction... I told you that I refused to endure my father's fate and I have never, before or after, repeated that same sentiment aloud. Not even to her. To disparage my parent's marriage in such a manner was utterly disrespectful of me at the very least...”

"I know that, Luc..."

He offered the soothing acknowledgement in a quiet, choked whisper. There was something like relief clamping his lungs. There was something joyful and utterly terrifying at the same time in the knowledge that his friend, his crazy friend, was truly here. In the flesh. Alive and well, after their harsh ride through those last, bitterly dark years... To be finally able to accept that they both had made it to the other side of Voldermort's sick war was just... plainly liberating.

"Luc..."

He used the name in wonder. In a softly reverent and astonished half-breath and received a glowing smile in return that left him dazzled.

"Yes, Severus, we've made it, my friend. He is dead and we are alive!... We are both well. We are safe and we are also worry free now that you've, finally, decided to wake up"

They both laughed, locked together in a strange moment of utterly childish relief. Of uncomplicated happiness. Of silent, heartfelt gladness...

"How is Cissy?” He rasped the question suddenly into the silence. A shiver of cold fear running down his spine in the blink of an eye at the realization that he... he'd seen Draco and Luc, but not her. Not her!...

"She's gone home in a huff. Didn't much like it when she found Potter and I “brawling” down the corridor. One disgusted look at my swollen eye was all it took her to decide there and then that she'd had enough “masculine nonsense” for the day. Didn't even have the decency to congratulate me in the fine achievement of breaking the idiot's nose with absolutely no magic!"

Severus was too relieved to chuckle at the obvious attempt at humor and the moment turned serious in the blink of an eye. No one else had ever managed to read his changing moods as accurately as Luc.

Silence fell once again between them, but it had a peaceful quality this time. They both saw it now for what it was: a moment of respite that allowed Severus some more time to ponder on the thoughts that were crossing his mind. His wound throbbed almost constantly on his neck. Not as painfully as it had done while he'd been still trapped in Azkaban, but still troubling enough to remind him that he... he'd believed himself dead. Or, at least dying, during the final hours of the battle.

"What happened, Luc?"

The neutral expression in his friend's intent features vanished at once. Pale gray eyes searched his own face with measuring intensity.

"What do you know -or think you know-, exactly, Severus?"

He pondered the question for a moment. Whirling memories of half-remembered moments flashed through his mind's eye...

He thought back to Nagini: Huge, wet fangs, that were dripping with dark venom sinking into his neck... He remembered the awful pain that followed as a deeply corrosive, unendurable and quite weakening wave of cursed fire that spread at top speed throughout his veins. He had memories of blood. Of Potter. Of his own increasing desperation to deliver the awful message that would kill the both of them: The Dark Lord and Lily's child. He'd believed it was impossible to save one without allowing the other to... remain. He'd lost all hope of ever finding an alternative to Albus' solution and had unburdened his wretched knowledge on that boy, knowing that it would ultimately lead him to destruction.

-For the greater good. It's all for the greater good, Severus...- He remembered the soul-destroying echo of Albus' merciless words dominating his very last thoughts with their poisonous self-justification and the feeling of remorse that shattered him. He remembered dying in a wave of hate-filled self-condemnation and deep shame. Lily... Oh, Lily... How he'd failed her and her son... once again!.

He recalled waking up afraid. Alone. The dark walls of Azkaban closing in on him... He remembered weeks of numbness. And terror. And fear. He remembered Peterssen...

Then the world had just exploded into chaos and there had been nothing but... THIS!.

"I don't really know how to answer that question, Luc. I... I don't know what to think!" Deep frustration overcame him and he sighed, flopping back against the pillows like an old and ruffled cat "It all comes back to the boy, doesn't it?. That's the only thing that's clear enough to me."

Luc smiled in response, one long leg coming to rest with elegant flair over the other leg's knee.

"Should I assume that “the boy” refers to our esteemed Saviour, Severus?"

A barely-there inclination of his head was good enough to encourage Luc into further speech:

"Your unfailing ability to reduce any given set of circumstances to their most essential truth remains, as always, a constant source of wonder to me, my friend. I'd have to agree with you there, though: POTTER happened. He won the war, you see... and, when he did not die, his fame shot into the stratosphere almost overnight"

"As if that brat needed any more attention..." He muttered under his breath with bitter resentment, not really caring for these news but perfectly unsurprised by them.

Luc's head turned very slightly to the left. Thoughtful eyes alert with mirth and questions, both.

"His favor saved my family from a truly ugly fate, Severus. Cissy did him a good turn at the last second. Told the Lord that the boy was dead and that... stupid... Half-Blood went ahead and believed a fierce woman, whose family he'd threatened for so long... Turns out that Potter was alive and planning his enemy's very welcome demise. This time for good."

Severus' eyes clashed with Luc's own. Ebony depths filling with understanding at long last.

"So the boy protected Cissy in return, didn't he?" The question abandoned his lips more like an obvious statement than a query that required confirmation. He could see Albus' pet hero behaving thus. Yes, Potter... Potter would have been generous to those who'd helped him.

Luc's blond head shook in confirmation and he saw his friend's lips curve in a small rueful smile.

"He helped Draco, too. Saved my son from a truly ghastly fate during the battle."

The uncharacteristic shudder that raked Lucius' frame brought back the memory of a claim the repellent auror had made:

"Did Draco really almost fall victim to Fiendfyre?"

Horrified dark eyes glazed with distress on the receiving end of Luc's jerk of assent. He could not imagine a death more excruciating... and to know, without a doubt, that such a fate could have befallen his godchild...

"I, myself, had taken steps to protect my own interests in case of discovery. I am sure you remember what they were. You were there when the brilliance of my plot suddenly struck me, after all. And it worked like magic, by the way. Despite your irritating certainty that it wouldn't!"

His thoughts whirled thankfully away from nightmare-inducing images of his godson being swallowed alive by cursed fire and he turned an appraising look in Luc's direction.

"I have to assume then that Macnair never made it... "

A slight shrug of wide shoulders emphasized a response as unapologetic as it was harsh.

"Colin Creevy's wand, I believe"

His mind shorted with sheer shock at that detail and he turned disbelieving eyes to his companion:

"Creevy's?. That is impossible!. Colin Creevy was as useless as he was strange. He wouldn't, ever, have managed to take out Mcnair..."

Luc's expression didn't waver in the slightest, but his tone turned frosty and very careful. Pointed.

"I have nothing to add, officially, to that uncannily accurate assessment of yours"

Severus heard, loud and clear, the words his friend kept back. Macnair had been a brutal sadist of the worst kind and, although he'd known the man since they'd both been eleven, he found himself unable to feel more than vague neutrality about his death. He was gone and Luc was out of prison... all in all the better man had triumphed in this case.

"And the elf?"

Incredulous laughter broke out across the room.

"The elf?. Severus, I can't believe you've just asked me that ridiculous question. The elf is at home, of course!. Or are you implying that there was even the most remote possibility that any of the ministry paper-pushers, unimaginative as they all are, would have ever suspected ME of bullying one of my own house elves into forcing Walden Macnair to “Imperius” me yearly, no less, into the Dark Lord's service?"

Dark eyes flickered slowly as his head shook in accord.

"I agree that your thought process on the matter was singularly twisted, Luc. That's precisely why I never thought it'll work..."

The silence that followed became the small quietude in which he was forced to endure the utterly satisfied expression that was reflected all over the devastatingly handsome face of his oldest friend.

"So... no one ever found out. Did they even bother to check Mcnair's wand?"

Luc's snort was both derisive and triumphant, unholy mirth brought silver shards of pleasure to his cold and pale gray gaze.

"Of course they checked the wand!. They were so eager to call me a liar that it was almost... too easy... to prove them wrong. Hermione Granger, Merlin bless her pious heart, insisted rather forcibly on having all of us, Death Eaters, judged in specially open sessions of the Wizengamot. All kinds of new and fairer laws were hastily passed in order to make their justice more ethical. I couldn't have planned it better if I had written those ridiculously hufflepuffian laws myself!”

Black eyes glowed in shocked, wonder-filled understating when a picture, a truly ironic picture of exactly what had happened began to finally form within his mind.

"Ethical laws, like the muggles. Granger... Of course!"

Luc's smile was wide and cold blooded, the expression in his face reminiscent of a shark's after a successful hunt.

"It all worked like a dream in my favor. I even received a public apology at the end of it all since I had been initially imprisoned on Potter's word alone, accused of crimes that I committed only because I was forced to obey My Lord's orders under the Imperius."

He was stunned at the idiocy of the ministry.

"I can't believe it!. A second war comes along with you on the losing side, again, and they fall for the same trick line, hook and sinker!..."

An elegant blond eyebrow waggled at him.

"It was a rather good trick, Severus. A true masterpiece of great cunning and ingenuity..."

He had to laugh at that. Only a Malfoy would have bet his whole future on that kind of wild card and come out triumphant.

"So you walked out with an apology and I ended up in Azkaban. That's just..." His words came to an abrupt halt. Parched throat raw with the injustice of it all. Bitterness engulfed him so suddenly that he was not at all prepared to conceal it and it shone, like lethal poison, through every whispered syllable when he added helplessly "I don't even know what that is..."

Silence burned the air between them with the resentment that was pounding through his every vein, pouring off his rigid form in wave upon wave of disgust.

"No, Severus. That was not how it happened at all!. You are not even close, old friend"

Luc's tone had softened with concern. That beautiful pale face was taut with barely concealed worry and sheer regret shone as clear as pure water in those smoke colored eyes.

"Potter went crazy over you, but you were... asleep... for such a long time... Your court case simply didn't happen. Nobody wanted to be the first to say it needed to go through and you... you were not even conscious. It was easier to continue with everyday life and let it all go. By the point when you started to show signs of waking they tried to rush the hearing, but there wasn't enough time..."

He understood the words but their truth burned him in an inferno of bottomless resentment:

"They allowed me to rot in Azkaban!" He growled at the top of his voice, enraged with them all for their betrayal, and Luc flinched in his seat.

"No. NO!. They only took you there when it became clear that you'd be waking before the court case could go through. Granger's new laws worked against you, Severus!... and Potter, with his high profile position, could do nothing, Nothing!, but follow proper protocol or risk the kind of full-blown scandal that would have torn the auror department apart..."

He looked straight into his friend's gray eyes but could not see them. His heart thundered and his mind reeled with outrage:

"Do not lie to me, Luc!. I woke up in that Hell-hole and the infirmary staff called me a murderer. They took pleasure in breaking me. Theirs was not the behavior of people who believe themselves to be in the presence of an innocent man!"

Luc's pale hair shone like sunlight and his rose-tinted lips tightened furiously in a face that had gone savage with affronted dislike.

"Peterssen!..."

Severus felt like screaming. Like throwing himself right off the bed in order to grab Luc's rigid shoulders and shake him right off that ridiculously outraged stillness.

"Yes, Peterssen, and his two bloody henchmen!. The very same men who tortured me while I laid, sick as a dog, on that dammed infirmary!. They treated me like only a man who's been found guilty would have been treated. I was in Azkaban, for Merlin's sake!. I felt condemned. I was put through all the paces as soon as I came to: the derision and the insults and the spitting in the face... Those were the mildest things that they blessed me with, so don't you DARE try to convince me that I dreamed it all up, Lucius Malfoy!"

Luc was pale. He looked sick and furious, shocked right into paralysis. Incensed:

"I. Am. Telling. You. The. Truth!. I'll even swear it, Severus. On Narcissa's very life!. On Draco's!:

You were at the Manor for the first year and a half. Draco was so certain that he could cure you...

Potter became an absolute thorn on our side for all of that time. I threw him out and he started to follow me whenever I so much as set one foot on Diagon Alley. Cissy was hounded by her sister non-stop. And Draco... Draco came to blows with him. With Weasley. With half the blasted gryffindors of Hogwarts, at least twice a week, when he had to go back to the school for his last year...”

“I don't believe you"

“IT. IS. THE. TRUTH!”

A pause ensued then. An oppressive, resentful one. Their eyes clashed and both glared right into each other's faces. Then Luc swallowed visibly and a sigh rent the air. The words that followed were quieter. But also firmer. Each sentence filled with what his friend obviously thought to be nothing but the whole, undeniable, truth:

"Things came to a head over the Christmas break, during Draco's second attempt at seventh year.

Potter showed up at the house with Dumbledore's portrait under one arm. He demanded to see you and I set the hounds on him. That was when Mcgonagal went berserk. Whether it was Potter himself who convinced her to do it, or that crazy, painted ex-mentor of yours, I've never known. But she went ahead and sued us, US, on your behalf. She accused us of having literally kidnapped you off the battlefield and the Wizengamot itself became embroiled in a legal battle that, I, ultimately lost.

You were transferred to Hogwarts two and a half years ago and remained there ever since. That was until your very temporary relocation to Azkaban became a necessity"

Severus was stunned into silence. Ebony pools of astounded incredulity turned their mystified depths towards Luc's flushed face.

"Minnie sued you?. YOU?. And the Wizengamot... What on Earth...?. Luc, that's just... it's ridiculous!"

His friend barked out a laugh that had just a hint of sheer hysteria. Gray eyes shone, like polished diamonds, and that cultured voice shook audibly when it added very fiercely:

"It wasn't at all ridiculous, Severus!. It was a miracle. I loved every bloody second of it all, and you... you poor, old bastard... You've got to finally be treated as you should have been all along and you were not even there to enjoy any of it!"

Ringing silence followed that assertion and they both sat, stunned and utterly drained, staring right at each other for a very long time...

"I can't believe it!. It all sounds so... far fetched, Luc!. Did it never occur to you that things were simply... too good to be true?"

Silver eyes acquired the very harshness of cut diamonds.

"Yes, my friend: Those kind of ideas did occur to me. I even went through a long period of enough cynical disbelief to fall a Mountain Troll, all of it on your behalf.

Then I stopped judging it all through the eyes of a man who's fought two wars. I remembered how I felt when I was young and had the whole world at my feet. I remembered what I wanted and how I saw the world around me. How very simple everything seemed to me then: life was made for either war or peace. There was either hatred or forgiveness. Love or friendship. Light magic or dark... and I suddenly understood what I was seeing...

It is all distressingly obvious, in my opinion, although I know that you will fail to see it for a very long time."

Severus was peeved something fierce with that little cryptic rant. He disliked mind-games more than almost anything else and the fact that Luc, LUC, was now playing one on him was beyond maddening!.

"And this amazingly inspired truth of yours that I'll be too blind and jaded to see is...?" The question broke for freedom among clipped, frozen vowels. A tone that could have flayed dragons all but shaping them into vicious, cutting life. But his friend didn't appear much enthused to respond.

There was a smile, though: a soothing and gentle thing being directed towards him from those pale lips and Luc's voice, when it finally bothered to break the silence, was unusually gentle:

"I won't put you through the shock that the answer will bring you. Not right now, at least, Severus. I actually think that things might turn out for the better if I let you figure this one out at your own pace..."

"Oh, For Merlin's sake, Luc!. Since when have you ever bothered to sugar-coat any bad news that you had to give me?"

White blond hair fell around those beautiful features like a curtain of sunlight when the pureblood's head turned very slightly to the left, in order to study him intently:

"These are not bad news, my friend. Not bad at all. This is the moment when the Founders have, finally, pulled their heads out of their arses and are actually seeing you clearly, at at last!. This is the answer to every single prayer that I've ever offered to the Heavens on your behalf, Severus Snape, and you were exactly right in your assessment of this particular situation, as usual: it all comes down to Harry Potter, my friend. It all comes down to him, indeed..."

TBC...

Ch7

Ch9