Courting Disaster. Chapter 18.

[pekeleke]

Title: Courting Disaster. 18.

Rating : NC-17.

Author: pekeleke

Word Count: 2306

Warnings: None.

Disclaimer: Don't own these characters. No money is being made out of this work.

Summary: For once in his life Harry Potter has a plan. A carefully plotted plan to help him conquer the heart of an extremely reluctant Severus Snape, only... conquering a suspicious ex-spy isn't for the fainthearted and soon Harry finds himself -quite literally- courting disaster.

Courting Disaster.

  

Harry shifts uncomfortably in his chair for the third time in the last five minutes, trying hard to keep a tight lid on his increasing frustration with the people surrounding them.  He is a regular of this particular restaurant and therefore knows it to be a busy, but charming, place that tends to attract customers who are more interested in the quality of their food than a posh, overly pompous atmosphere.

Every single time he'd come here with his friends before they'd enjoyed their dinner while a pleasantly unobtrusive background of relaxed conversation and discreet laughter lulled them into believing they could behave just like any other group of friends would have.  They've never felt like “The Golden Trio” here before.  They have always been treated just like any other set of regular customers would have been, but none of that is in evidence tonight and the absence of that relaxed atmosphere has already begun to affect the mood of his group, turning his friend's first ever dinner out with them as a couple into an absolute disaster.

Harry has chosen this place because he's used to it.  He dines here often, is well known to everyone who frequents it and has never had any issues with either the management or the other patrons.  He'd been counting on that familiarity to curve whatever reactions Severus' presence among them was bound to cause and now, seating stiffly at their usual table while a silence so thick that he's certain he could hear a mosquito bat its wings -if one were to fly swiftly by- he has no other option but to admit to himself just how badly he'd miscalculated the effect of the other patrons' curiosity about his relationship with the former spy when they finally saw them together.

The constant barrage of little looks and bad press that they have continued to gather despite his best efforts to curve them is starting to get under his skin something fierce.  Things tend to be particularly bad whenever someone dares to criticize Severus directly in his hearing or he forces himself to read whatever new atrocity the Prophet has dared to insinuate against his beloved. 

Severus himself hasn't said a single word on the matter since the afternoon Harry realized the man couldn't brew in his own bloody lab and, although, that has been swiftly solved by his own insistence on spending every evening thereafter holed up in the man's potion lab in order to give him the chance to work on his precious potions, Harry fears that the unrelenting pressure they are both currently under will prove itself to be stronger than their combined will one of these days.

He's started to have nightmares in which his Prince tells him in no uncertain terms that he's finally realized he's got absolutely no need to put up with the awful media circus that surrounds him, and has decided to walk away from such troublesome relationship. Informing him that he'll go as far as to attempt to find himself some other lover in the future, someone who'll be hopefully as equally willing to adore him as Harry himself has proven to be but who'll also be more pleasantly low-key. Someone less famous and unnecessarily adored by a wild bunch of crazy, stalkerish fans. Someone less stressful, more wholesome.  Someone who can give him the welcome peace of his former anonymity back.

'I need peace and quiet, Harry.  I Need space.  Respect.  Dignity. I've come to the conclusion that I'll never find any of those things with you.  The press will not leave me alone and your crazy fans despise me.  They will never let us be, and I—I've just realized that I deserve better than this. I hope you understand...' The imagined scene sickens him so much that he groans out loud as he sits oh-so-stiffly at the cheerfully decorated little table that is in no way private enough to grant his group a respite from the constant, intrusive staring they are currently being subjected to.

Severus turns towards him and gives him a curious little look even thought he's also obviously attempting to ignore the blatantly rude stares that follow his every motion like a mirroring spell.  Harry grits his teeth and meets the Slytherin's dark eyes head on, deeply resenting the harsh judgment that every bloody bastard and their uncle feels unfairly entitled to pass onto his precious beloved, even though the potioneer has done absolutely nothing to deserve their despicable treatment of him since the war ended, and has been not only put on trial for his role as a Death Eater but also acquitted on the grounds that he'd been a spy for the light all along.

“Are you alright, Harry?  You look pale.”  Severus' worried question brings him out of his frustrated thoughts in a rush of distraught contrition and he smiles ruefully at the darkly attired figure seating rigidly beside him.

“Yes. I'm fine, Severus.  I just spaced out for a second or two.  I hope I didn't miss anything too important while I was busy daydreaming.”  He offers quietly in reply, plastering a small smile on his lips that must have fallen pretty short of his usual fare because it only manages to make the potioneer frown harder.

“That must have been a pretty terrible daydream.  You looked positively miserable.”  Pale, elegant fingers abandon the salad fork they've been holding in order to tip his face upwards with a gentle push under his chin, forcing him to look directly into Severus' clearly anxious gaze.  “What's the matter, Harry?  Is the food not to your taste?  I thought you said you like this particular establishment.”

Harry freezes on the receiving end of Severus' seemingly spontaneous gesture, willing his shocked mind not to do or say anything that could cut this incredible moment short before it has the time to come to its own conclusion, whatever that may be.  It is so rare for the Slytherin to show this sort of open concern towards him in public -or even in private for that matter- that Harry has no hope in hell of containing the wild rush of sheer affection that is welling up inside him like the most ferocious tidal wave, flooding every single cell he possesses with the kind glowing joy that he can neither cage properly nor suppress in any way, least of all in the presence of the creature who has so easily caused it.

“The food here has always been excellent, my Prince, but it's the company I'm keeping that makes tonight so special.”  Harry whispers that heartfelt sentence for Severus' ears alone and feels more than merely happy when he becomes the entire focus of the most beautiful black gaze he's ever seen.  The restaurant simply vanishes from his consciousness until all: food, table, lifelong friends and even the room crammed to the rafters with irritatingly rude strangers becomes nothing but easily ignored white noise, buzzing on the periphery of his senses. 

All he cares about is right in front of him, peering down into his eyes with midnight-colored intensity, touching the underside of his jaw with oh-so-careful fingertips and making his besotted heart pound a mile a minute by doing absolutely nothing besides seating here, next to him, defying everyone's expectations and keeping his head high through every baleful stare and disgruntled whisper. Through every unforgivably rude remark born of biased disapproval. Through every second that his beautiful, courageous Prince is being forced to spend in the kind of hell that he most certainly doesn't deserve.

“I love you, Severus Snape.”  Harry says out loud, bowing down to his urgent need to fill this second with the weight of the one truth he can't bear to deny for anyone's sake.  The words pierce the heavy silence like the lash of a whip pierces human flesh and although he's unaware of it right at that second the fact is that he's whispered them with a tone that made it perfectly clear they had come right from the heart.

Severus shocks everyone present when he doesn't flinch back, when he doesn't reject such candidly expressed sentiment as forcefully as the entire restaurant expects him to. He does nothing but remain right where he is, appearing for all the world to have been rendered physically unable to look away from Harry. Finally he blinks ever so slowly, as if waking from a strange, mind-numbing hex and exhales a long, shuddering sigh before granting the young Savior one of his rare and shy smiles, answering him with a gentleness that leaves everyone present literally breathless:
“I know that you do, Harry, but that is no reason to ignore both your meal and your friends in favor of daydreaming.  Mrs. Granger here has been trying to engage you in conversation for the best part of five minutes, nyingdu-la.”

Severus' answer is so quiet that no one would have been able to hear it under normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances in the slightest.  This is the first official 'date' of the most in-famous couple in the entire wizarding world at this point in time, and so it is that as soon as the potioneer's dark and gravelly voice stops speaking there is a sudden explosion of murmurs as everyone around them attempts to find out precisely what the despised Slytherin pariah has just called their Savior in front of so many witnesses.

Harry chuckles in amusement, knowing in his heart of hearts that whatever language that was, the words themselves must have been a term of endearment and, although he wonders what they mean to Severus and why, exactly, he's decided to bestow them upon him at this particular moment, the one thing he can't ignore right now is that his dark haired Prince has gifted them to him.  He's been most unequivocally acknowledged in public.  He's been singled out and treated as a beloved companion by a man who is fiercely private when he had absolutely no reason to do any such a thing. Harry feels as light as air and as buoyant as a brightly colored kite firmly tethered to the hands of the elegant creature who owns his heart, and so he presses his jaw lovingly against the capable long fingers that are still holding his jaw, desperate to feel the delicate touch of Severus' pale skin upon his own for a single second longer.

“Harry...”  Ron and Hermione shift on the opposite side of the table, clearly at a loss as to what to say or how to react to the strange situation.  Despite his friends' unwavering support of their relationship the truth is that neither of them have ever seen Severus and him together since they became a couple, and therefore must be as shocked as everyone else in the restaurant seems to be with regards to how close they've grown to each other in so short a time.

Harry watches Ron's wide-eyed stare follow Severus' fingertips as they pull away from his face and lower towards the table, curling once again around the abandoned salad fork they'd discarded when the man first tried to get his attention.  There is a dazzled sort of wonder flashing across the surface of his best friend's bright blue eyes, and Harry can't help the sheer sense of relief that bubbles up the back of his throat and escapes him in the shape of a peal of delighted laughter as he looks from Ron's flustered face to Hermione's pleased one before sweeping the room from left to right, staring defiantly at the stunned sea of strangers that fill the restaurant and silently daring them all to call him an idiot for being in love with the most amazing human being he's ever encountered.

His eyes settle over Rita Skeeter's disgruntled expression and he smiles at her with the kind of smug triumph that he hasn't felt in ages. This isn't just another match he's won.  No.  This is a mayor battle in the relentless war he's been waging against the public's perception of his Prince as a cold, unfeeling man and he's just won it, fair and square.  He can see it in the journalist's sour expression, in the shocked disbelief that is beginning to appear in each and every single face that looks back at him with stunned bewilderment, and can't help but thank his lucky stars for Severus' unusually open show of concerned affection.

This is the break he's been waiting for.  The one action that will make all those who've been constantly disparaging Severus' aloofness falter at long last.  This is the moment that will turn the tide of resentment that their relationship has been gathering so far into something that may one day grow into actual acceptance and he can not help but sigh with sheer contentment as he acknowledges Skeeter with a small dip of his head and watches her lips tighten with the sour lack of grace of the painfully defeated.

When his focus returns to their table his concerns about the silence that surrounds them and the constant scrutiny of the other patrons has deserted him altogether and he smiles at his friends brilliantly, allowing Hermione to engage him in small talk while Ron sits there and stares at Severus with that hysterically funny bewildered look on his face while his Prince blatantly ignores the attention his actions have gathered from the crowd and continues eating his meal with the undeniable elegance that defines him.  Carefully cutting every morsel of food with almost military precision before spearing it into his fork and bringing it primly to his thin lips at regular intervals, chewing it for a few seconds before repeating the entire process until everyone around them eventually re-focuses back on their own  meals and there's nothing but blessed peace surrounding them.

TBC...

( Chapter 17 )

( Chapter 19 )