The voice under all silences. Chapter 13

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 13

His eyes looked on as the boy struggled. Potter was sweating quite profusely and attempting to ignore the constant whine of the red-haired menace whom he called his best friend. They were engaged in gormless contemplation of a huge dining table and attempting to decide, to Severus unending amusement, which one of them should hold what and how best to bring the whole catastrophe of heavily ornamented oak in, through the front door, without the use of magic.

Weasley was all for a shrinking and levitating charm, after the third failed attempt, but Potter was vociferously resisting. Because the door had been left open while they argued ad nauseum over what to do people had started to stop whatever they'd been doing to approach the pair.

A fair amount of commotion was starting to wreak havoc in the former peace of the hallway as an ever-increasing crowd of Potter's muggle neighbors started to congregate outside the door.

He sighed to himself. His back ached and his arm pulsed with a constant thrum of discomfort. He was tired and out of sorts, and the infernal racket that they were so carelessly producing was slowly, but certainly, murdering what little amount of patience he had left.

His teeth gritted and he attempted, for the eleventh time that morning, to block out the noise around him and allow himself to... drift... but it was no use. He was clearly on edge and he found himself unable to settle.

Potter and Weasley were conferring with a man who seemed to be some sort of manager for the building and a lot of nodding and ah-ing was going on out there. People peered around the door-jamb with the rude curiosity of the nosy and he found himself resenting their unwanted scrutiny of the dismally empty room. He was surprised to discover that he felt truly ashamed on the menace's behalf. To be so very... obvious about both: his needs and lack of decorum was, to Severus' own mind, the very worst of indiscretions.

He felt nothing but embarrassed discomfort as he sat upon that sofa while a bunch of perfect strangers stared straight at him with all kinds of misconceptions clearly fleeting through their minds.

By the time someone advised the idiotic Gryffindor duo to hook the blasted table onto a rope and fling it in through the balcony windows, he had decided to make himself scarce.

He visited the bathroom and refreshed himself carefully. His clothes looked rumpled and odd to his own eyes, but he'd seen the outfits that the muggles who'd been gaping at him so rudely had been wearing and was reassured that he wouldn't look too strange among the lot. There was a comb by the sink and he used it carefully. He wanted to avoid calling unusual attention to himself. Aware, as he was, of the fact that he'd rejected his own roots to such extent that he'd avoided all contact with the strange world his own father had belonged to, for far longer than he'd ever lived within it. There had been nothing left for him here, after all... At least not once his mother had managed to finally perish in her quest to keep content the brute she'd chosen to throw her whole life away on...

Whatever fate had befallen that thrice-dammed bastard, Tobias Snape, after the last time they'd seen each other, Severus had never known nor truly cared. He'd found out about his mother's illness after she'd already died. Died because she hadn't wanted to explain to her wizard-hating husband that her kin was far more advanced than his own when it came down to health care. If she'd bothered to pay a single visit to St. Mungo's she'd have survived, but no. Oh, no!. That would have been far too sensible a thing to do... never mind that it had left her son an orphan. Or that, in behaving thus, she'd lost both her life and the blasted man in the end, anyway... She'd chosen her precious Tobias over her own son and when he'd found that out, during her funeral, no less!, he had also found courage enough to scream truly unforgivable things right into his father's shocked face for the very first time in his life. He'd been seventeen then, had left home in an absolute storm of rage and grief and never bothered to return...

Without the promise of his mother's presence in the house there had been nothing left for him to either take from or offer to his progenitor. Eileen had chosen that old bastard and paid the prize for it dearly, she paid it in both her own and her son's blood. They'd also paid with every tear they had shed along the years and the bitter disappointment that they'd found within their lives. All of it because the man she'd chosen hadn't been able to get past the fact that neither of them were... muggle enough... for his taste.

Tobias had also chosen, of course. He'd married his mother in the first place, had wanted her enough at one point to beget a child with her. But hadn't cared enough for her to find a way to keep her alive and whole for as long as he possibly could. He'd refused to ask, to search... to move Heaven and Earth in order to find some solution that might have kept her with them for a single second longer... He'd known that she was magical all along. Had been aware of the undeniable fact that there were things wizards could do that escaped his own limited understanding of what's possible and what is not, but he'd chosen to ignore that avenue of possibilities completely and had ended up paying for that decision by loosing his young wife...

Severus had no more time for the kind of resentment he'd once held against the pair, nor for his former need to hear the apology that he used to believe they still owed him. He didn't want to keep holding onto the kind of disillusionment that had broken the barely-there-confidence of the child he'd once had been. His parents... his parents had been simply wrong for one another. They had both hated each other too much in the end, they had never loved the other enough from the very beginning... and they certainly had neither cared for, nor really deserved to have been granted the opportunity of bringing a child into the home they had created. A home that had lacked... everything. A home that had never truly been any such thing, not in the way it counted...

Those maudlin thoughts, the likes of which he hadn't bothered to contemplate in almost two whole decades, aggravated him no end and he washed his hands furiously. Then proceeded to put his pale face through the ordeal of enduring the very same kind of distressed, harsh scrubbing.

When he could take no more of that he used an intriguingly black colored toothbrush that he assumed Potter must have been intending for his use, feeling utterly superior all the time in view of the childish behavior of the auror. A black toothbrush?... Seriously?. The unsubtle dig at his own color preferences had been tried a time too many by far better pranksters than Lily's child.

He rinsed the toothbrush with punctilious attention to detail. Regally ignoring the irreverent red, lion-shaped cup meant to hold the utensil and depositing it, instead, on the corner of the shelf that ran all along the lower edge of the mirror that hung above the washbasin. His point thus made with both: respectful and silent dignity, he exited the bathroom with a half-amused snort and a spring of defiant purpose to his step.

A disgusted look towards the door showed him the table still perched majestically over the bland carpeting of the hallway... There was no one out there at the moment and he wondered for a second why it was that the masses had abandoned the entryway before remembering having heard someone hollering inelegantly that there was a rope down in the basement storage cubicle...

The thick coat that Potter had given him yesterday hung in splendid solitude from a peg inside the hallway closet and he grabbed it with a deep sigh of relief. He needed peace. He needed it now and, by Salazar!, he was going to get it... He slipped out of the doorway with the quiet efficiency of long practice. Not once thinking of the boy he'd left behind as he applied himself to the self-imposed task of... vanishing.

The stairs took him down one floor and he walked towards the lift there. He was relatively certain that he'd never cross the auror, if he boarded the contraption here, and saw no reason to waste his meager energy in endless arguments with the difficult child. Not while he could just... save himself the trouble of enduring a truly stupid altercation.

He was right in his assumption, as it turned out, and he soon found himself in the huge lobby of the building without having encountered a single person on his way down. A uniformed gentleman sat, clearly bored, behind a gleaming counter. The strange bookcase at his back filled with little holes that held what looked suspiciously like... paper slips. His steps faltered as he attempted to find a good reason to be here that'd convince the muggle man to let him walk past him, but he found himself relieved when that wasn't even necessary. One sharp nod of his head towards the stranger granted him a perfectly gleaming smile and a punctiliously polite:

"Good Morning, Mr. Snape, Mr. Potter informed us all that you'd be visiting with him for a while. I hope you enjoy your first vacation in the city, Sir!”

He could have laughed at the idiocy of the boy, giving the muggles any kind of explanation for his presence in the building could only accomplish the purpose of facilitating his own escape from it, at any point he so desired. And he desired it now with every exhausted fiber of his being...

"I hope so, too" He muttered politely for the doorman's benefit, never actually stopping in his determined path towards the revolving doors. Just as he reached them, though, he decided to ease his own cause even further with the staff, just in case, and turned his head around, offering the stranger a very small smile over one shoulder and wishing him jovially: "Have a good day!"

Sunlight met him as he stood perfectly still in the busy pavement for about half a second. London stretched before him in rare warm weather and he felt better at once. In control. Confident.

He broke into a long-limbed walk, without so much as a backwards glance, and felt much more calmer. Relaxed. Stronger... To have, so unexpectedly, gained the very welcome understanding that he could simply walk himself straight into freedom at any point he so desired brought a sudden, relieved exhilaration to his paranoid mind.

Traffic buzzed all around him. People walked. Animals trudged behind elderly owners and the common life of content muggles soothed his own worries into a more manageable size. His senses focused so completely on the sights, the sounds and the smells that surrounded him that he drifted along happily for about half an hour,without bothering to check the time.

His strength was not what it used to be, though, and he was conscious of his thin legs cramping as he stood awaiting for a traffic light to allow him right of passage. His black eyes searched the road quickly and found a park. There was an empty bench beckoning him closer with the promise of some rest. He crossed the road and headed for the quiet corner with stubborn bloody-mindedness, thighs all but trembling under the unusual strain he'd just put them trough so soon after being released from St. Mungo's. His emaciated form plopped down on to the bench with inelegant gracelessness and he allowed his pale lips to part slightly, quietly gasping for breath...

Some time passed while he sat there: a darkly attired gentleman simply enjoying the sunshine, watching people stroll casually by. No one noticed him very much. Nobody cared... and he found himself comforted by the anonymity. He was no murderer here. No spy. No object of revenge. No despised ex-teacher. He was neither hated nor loved. He was nothing but a dark shape on a bench...

One second stretched slowly into the next as he perched there, enjoying this rare feeling of freedom with quiet glee. Eventually, though, his peacefulness was broken by brute force as he suddenly realized that there were thoughts crowding his mind. Foreign thoughts... panicked tendrils of another person's consciousness that were attempting to breach him!...

His eyes clamped closed instinctively and he became an impenetrable blank, echoing walls of utter nothingness. He became instantly blind and deaf and quite mute too. He was not conscious of how truly ruthless his determined -and forceful- rejection of the mind trying to reach him had actually been, he knew nothing but the terror of the attempted Legilimency attack. Memories -so many- of having the Dark Lord and Albus, both, attempting to invade his thoughts swirled within his consciousness like bubbles of sheer poison and he followed the instinctive urge to abandon his position. Retreat, find cover... run!.

His eyes shot open and he directed them immediately towards his own shoes. Towards the indistinct greyness of the asphalt that made up every street in the city of London. There was nothing there that could possibly help his mind-stalker identify his location and entrap him, nothing that would put him at risk by giving his position away... Small, careful steps allowed him to abandon the whole area and he breathed a sigh of relief when he finally found himself three blocks away from that bench by the park...

He was uncertain as to how much of his surroundings the unwelcome voyeur had managed to glimpse before he'd became aware of his intrusion, but was confident that he was probably mostly safe by now.

Police cars were shooting past along the road. Sirens blared, causing chaos of the worst kind. He allowed himself to become lost among the crowds as they were jostled around, in the urgent need to make room for all that unexpectedly displaced traffic... In the blink of an eye the road became too packed to move and he knew that he'd have trouble keeping his wounded arm away from unwanted contact with the careless muggles.

Potter had charmed the shield to give the appearance of some kind of device that the muggles themselves used to carry their own broken limbs in, whenever they were unlucky enough to injure themselves. But nothing could have disguised, or even explained, the distinctive blue flashes of warning magic that the ward emitted every single time that it was triggered. His eyes zeroed in on an alley, just a few streets down the road, and he headed towards it with a renewed purpose. It took five minutes of truly nightmarish struggle to reach the relative safety of the side street and, when he did, his eyes opened with pleasure as he spotted the small door to an antique shop that seemed to be open. Worn, leather-bound books filled the cramped window display and he all but flew in that direction, heart beating with deep joy at the prospect of losing a few minutes among the sorely missed presence of the inked word, carefully preserved for all eternity within the loving embrace of manually-bound-leather and thick parchment...

He walked in and a bell that was old fashioned and pleasantly mellow announced his entrance.

A short, plump man came to the front and stared at him expectantly through small round glasses. Severus looked around and the shadow of a small, pleased smile curved his lips. There must have been thousands of books in the cramped room. Then his eyes all but doubled in size when he spotted the small tome set on a pedestal, in the corner. Soft, artificial light fell gently over the delicately printed scene of a young mistress who was attempting to teach two small maidens the beautiful art of reading. A magnificent blue sky filled the background of the whole image, broken only by the exquisite nobility of an ancient cherry tree, ablaze with soft-petaled, pink flowers...

"Is that really what I think it is?" He wondered aloud, astonished, and the most pleased of smiles broke across the shopkeeper's mouth.

The man responded quietly but with no small amount of glee:

"That'll depend entirely on what you think it is, good Sir. I take it that you like books?"

Severus' dark eyes dared not stray away from that fussily dusted off pedestal. He weaved carefully around the packed room until he stood right beside it and could finally stare down in awe at the book that rested there. For a second he was voiceless, utterly enthralled by that beautifully rendered image...

"It is a first edition of Blake's “Songs of innocence and of experience”, is it not?"

A gentle chuckle filled the small room. It was a delighted, carefree sound.

"I see you know your books, my friend. I haven't had the pleasure of a visitor like you for a very long time. Would you care for a cup of tea?"

The offer distracted him enough to lift his dark eyes away from the lovely illustration. The other man was old and had a look about him that spoke of the kind of disheartened loneliness that he could easily relate to. The room was warm and clean, it was packed full of books that picked his curiosity too.

He decided to take the small risk of accepting such tempting invitation. A little conversation about books with this old man, who seemed to love the things almost as much as he himself did, couldn't possibly harm him. It'd be lovely if he could seat himself somewhere, too...

"It'd be an honor, Mr...?"

"Crowley. Robert Crowley at your service, Sir. Welcome to Rare Editions For The Enlightened And The Discerning, my friend. If you'd care to take a seat by the counter I shall bring you a hot cuppa in just a second. Then we can chat"

He didn't know how much time passed as he sat there, happily consuming cup of tea after cup of tea. Contentedly involved in the most exhilarating conversation that he'd shared with anyone for a very long time... There were untold literary treasures arranged within the packed shelves of this jewel of a shop. First editions that he'd only ever read about but never, actually, seen. Rare works, written by well-known authors that had barely seen the light of day... They discussed them all. He even touched a few yellowed pages with trembling fingers while his eyes became bright with dazed wonder and heartfelt pleasure... Robert Crowley was entertaining, knowledgeable and infinitely patient. He seemed to crave the company of another almost as much as Severus himself craved the man's books.

Eventually, though, the increasing cacophony of the absolute racket coming in from the streets drove them both to the windows... Their eyebrows furrowed with astonishment as they registered the sheer amount of uniformed police that filled both the small alley, just outside the modest shop, and the tiny sliver of road that they could glimpse beyond it..

"Something must have happened..." His companion commented in a small and wobbly voice and he must have looked utterly confused because his host turned towards him and added:

"Terrorists, you know?. There has been quite the trouble in the past. Bridges exploding. People suddenly disappearing from their homes in the middle of the night. The underground was targeted a few times... that sort of thing. It's been years though, at least four. Maybe even five since the last time I saw so much police..."

Severus' heart halted at that particular time-frame. He knew exactly what the muggle was talking about. Had most probably been among the beasts responsible for all that remembered havoc. The war... Voldermort's war had touched the muggles too... He shook his head in agreement, through a veritable fog of almost suffocating shame. The assent tore apart something deeply hidden inside him that was still too raw. Too wounded. That hadn't yet had time enough to heal...

"I've heard about that..."

Crowley looked right at him and smiled reassuringly.

"Don't look so worried, Sir. None of those things ever brought out this amount of police on to the streets. Don't you see?. There are no ambulances. No fire-trucks. No helicopters, sweeping wildly over our heads... Whatever has happened looks more like trouble than disaster to me"

Reedy shoulders relaxed ever so slightly as his own senses focused on the lack of rescue teams. His companion's obvious familiarity with the ways of the muggles had caught on onto their absence before he himself had registered that very important fact and he wondered idly what on Earth could be going on...

"Maybe someone's finally robbed the Crown Jewels for real" He whispered in a half-hearted attempt at humor and they both gasped with almost hysterical mirth.

"As I'm an Irishman by birth I won't deny that it'd amuse me to see that. You on the other hand... do speak with the accent of a true northerner. A Scot, I'd say, and that would make us both... almost friends, at least with regards to this small, uncharitable sentiment. Would it not?”

He was disinclined to begrudge the old man this one, insignificant, smidgen of himself. It wouldn't hurt him to confess something as irrelevant indeed as his own origins. He had no more true links to them, anyway...

"I was born near Lancashire, although I must confess that I've worked in Scotland for many years now. That land holds me in it's thrall, I'm afraid. I've reached the point were it'd be churlish to disagree with your assessment. I've become a Scot at heart, the region has become my home in a way that my native Northern England never did.”

Aged eyes studied him with a gentle kind of curiosity.

"Shame, then, that London won't hold your interest long enough for us to enjoy the company of a kindred soul more often. Books are being replaced by flashier things these days and it's hard, almost impossible, to find another person willing to talk about them for any length of time..."

He looked around in the stretching silence, heart comforted by the simplicity of the pleasure that his surroundings gave him.

"I shall return before I leave, I promise. I have enjoyed myself this afternoon more than I have in recent years... I might even purchase a book or two from your collection"

Pleasure flashed in the gaze of his glad host.

"Then I shall look forwards to that very welcome occasion, my good friend... would you like to call a cab before leaving?. I know it's rude to mention such things, but... you have the look of a man who has been gravely ill."

He faltered for a second, turning around slowly to stare right into the face of this old man. A strange object was being held in his direction. A square thing with small buttons, it was cordless, dial-less, too small... It looked nothing like the old phone his father used to have, although it was clear to him, judging by the other man's actions, that it's function was the same. Technology seemed to advance also for muggles...

"You are correct, of course. I have been recently ill, but I am... most satisfactorily recovering. I don't think I'll need a cab for my short trip back, though. Nevertheless I must thank you for the kind offer, Mr Crowley"

"Ah! I see. You are an independent man, are you not?. You wish to make your way alone, unhindered... Farewell then and remember to return. You are not the only one who enjoyed our afternoon of tea, books, and fine conversation"

He left the small shop with a smile on his face, a lightened heart and a promise to himself to remember the old man and his cramped, little book shop... He'd recovered some of his strength while he'd sat quietly and now felt recovered enough to go back to the madhouse that was Potter's flat.

Long pale fingers rose to button up the coat that he was wearing and he looked towards the sky in search of the sun. Morning seemed to have given way to very early afternoon and he suddenly realized just how long he'd been away. He started to walk out of the alley, thoughts distracted with the task of attempting to remember if the boy had actually mentioned when, exactly, that accursed dinner party of his was to take place. He could not remember it cropping up in the conversation at all.

-Well... I hope there's enough time for me to have a shower and a change of clothes, at the very least- He muttered under his breath, grouchily.

They had still been in the kitchen, locked in that bloody uncomfortable discussion about Potter's expectations, when Ron Weasley had shown up with the news that he'd brought the auror's new table. It was tucked up, apparently, in the back of a van that he'd hired a friend of his father's to drive.

There had been no time after that, nor privacy enough, for Severus to ask Potter for a change of attire. He'd decided to forego his morning shower as well on account of the unpleasant sensation that the constantly opened door of the house had given him and, therefore, still wore the same disconcertingly flimsy apparel that the auror had presented to him yesterday, when he'd showed up at the hospital to collect him. Severus had slept on the things now, had wandered through a quarter of London wearing them without having previously bothered to refresh them in any way and was loath to attend any kind of social gathering, be it welcome or otherwise, smelling quite like he did at the moment...

There was still a lot of mayhem on the road: stopped traffic clogged every street and police officers tromped all over the place, grainy picture in hand... Instinctively he shied away from all law and order personnel. He found them vaguely threatening, as they reminded him uncomfortably of the aurors. Their presence stressed him further with memory upon memory of worse times... Long practice took over and he turned away from the main thoroughfare. His dark clothing kept him hidden among the lengthening shadows, but he studied the street patrons all around him. It was clear to him that there was something going on, something big enough to grant unprecedented attention from the constabulary. He became wary in a heartbeat, worried sick by the idea of being threatened. He walked the streets alone, while it was perfectly obvious that some unidentified muggle criminal was at large within the crowd. He was disarmed and lacked the soothing presence of his own, powerful magic. He felt at a disadvantage in a way that regularly didn't affect him in the slightest. He knew that whoever they were hunting had, so far, quite successfully avoided the Bobbies and that meant that they were traveling alongside him, hugging the shadows like only all true scoundrels ever learn to do...

The park he'd visited earlier finally came into his view. The crowds had thickened here, though. Many shoppers and young mothers having come out to enjoy the unusually warm weather...

It was a scene that brought him both worry and relief. He could be quite inconspicuous here, there were too many people around for him to call anyone's attention in any way, but he'd be also more exposed. His bad arm was a constant weakness that could be bumped into by anyone careless enough to step too close... If his limb was jostled then the ward's flickering shield would expose the fact that there was something rather unusual about him and, with this much police all over the place, it would be quite a struggle to slip off... He sighed before taking the first uncertain step out of the shadows. He wanted nothing but to return, as soon as he could possibly manage it, to the safety of Potter's building.

A sudden flash of ferociously invasive Legilimency threatened to bring him to his knees. His mental barricades remained intact, but the attack unnerved him so much that he halted in the middle of the park. He'd been getting brief flashes of increasingly stronger attempts to make contact during the course of the morning, but his shields had been in place and he'd ignored them. He'd been busy having fun, far too entertained to wonder why it was that he'd been chosen to be the specific target of someone with enough ability to attempt a remote Legilimency attack... There weren't that many wizards able to do it, at least not to his knowledge, and the idea that he'd caught the attention of anyone with both the ability and the power to perform such a feat simply... terrified him.

A child bumped into his leg and he all but flinched, senses reeling with the need to walk away. He could not afford to remain standing out in the open. Stepping carefully backwards he ignored the mother shooting fast-paced apologies in his direction and weaved between two cyclists, cradling his wounded arm to his chest all the time... The park seemed to have lengthened since he last crossed it. He swore under his breath as his ridiculous shoes squeaked gently against the crunchy soil with every bloody step that he took.

A radio crackled somewhere behind him and he flinched away from the certain presence of a law officer. He understood that he was becoming too agitated, that his own path to safety laid before him in a straight line. He had no reason to fear the policemen at all, but his every instinct was alive with the need to turn around and find shelter. NOW!.

He took a sharp corner to the right. Heartbeat hammering against his wrists with pounding force. His back shook as he sagged against the rough brick of some building or other, black eyes closing for a second as he told himself to breathe... Panic didn't help at all in situations such as these. He was certain that he was safe enough, at least for the time being.

A moment or two more passed before he could convince himself to open his still closed eyes, in order to search the busy main street for signs of danger. Horns were blaring and a bus was attempting to squeeze between two badly parked police cars, bringing all traffic to a halt in utter chaos. He abandoned his hiding place and walked determinedly forwards. Ebony head bent down, towards the floor, and shoulders hunched. He crossed the street in a series of ungraceful little hops. Weaving, as rapidly as he could manage it, between the halted traffic and avoiding altogether the much busier route that followed the road down, towards the intersection regulated by a bunch of much ignored traffic lights. The street continued slightly downhill from here on end all the way to Potter's building and he sighed with relief when the crowd began to thin as he approached his destination.

He was mere steps away from the auror's tower when the large group by the door caught his attention. There was a lot more police here. Cars were parked everywhere in a wide arch... The glass doors to Potter's building were obscured by the sheer amount of uniforms hovering outside. Electricity cracked in the air all around him. The echoing sounds of broken down radio transmissions filled the silence with their guttural, uncomfortably metallic sounds...

He could not understand what he saw, but he trembled with fear. He only knew that something must have happened here and his sudden terror knew no bounds... Potter. Dear Merlin!... Potter had been targeted, somehow!. Suddenly paling features froze in absolutely livid fury and he wondered who, exactly, would have dared to touch the boy. He was going to rip their souls to ribbons if it turned out that they'd harmed Lily's child...

"I am telling you, officer, that we have very reliable intelligence to indicate that our target is on the move, he is being transported in our direction as we speak!"

The high-pitched whine that he automatically recognized as Granger's annoying, know-it-all-voice, reached his ears. A second later the absolutely frustrated answer of a plainly clothed detective did the same:

"You've been having the same ruddy “reliable intelligence” all-morning-long and fat good it has done, Mrs!. I'm telling you that I'm going to pull my boys away from this spot. It's a waste of our resources to concentrate this much manpower on such a narrow area. If the man has been taken then he is being moved as far away from here as the “perp's” vehicle can manage, while we continue to listen to your people and waste valuable time!"

"No. NO!. You are the one who doesn't understand the situation. The target himself is one of our most accomplished operatives. He is recovering from very serious injuries that won't allow for a fast transport. There is also a chance that he might have collapsed somewhere and is currently unable to reach help...”

His feet halted at the very edge of the crowd surrounding Granger and her extremely pissed off companion. They were all so involved in the verbal match that not a single one of them noticed his presence and, for that brief second, he wondered how the Hell some bastard could have managed to injure Potter and then kidnap him while the Weasley boy was near. He'd heard the stories while he'd laid in Azkaban, an unwilling victim to healer Peterssen's own brand of vigilante justice. Now that he thought about it that sick bastard had droned on unendingly about "The Auror Wonder-Team" and their wonderful, daring and absolutely awesome exploits. A complete bag of propagandistic tosh, in Severus' own opinion, but then... no one had ever bothered to ask him about it.

His eyes swept the packed entrance and found Minnie, Arthur, Molly... He saw Luc and Cissy, both. He surveyed the crowd, searching for another white-blond head, and there he was... Draco, seemingly slumped next to a dark-haired man that vaguely resembled Frank Longbottom...

-Longbottom? as in... Neville Longbottom?- His mind boggled at that one and he shied away from the thought like an owl hides from the light. He saw Weasley. And Weasley. And Weasley... Merlin knew there were enough of the damned gingers to drive him truly spare and there, right beside young Ginevra, with his dark head lowered and his eyes closed in what appeared to be utmost concentration, was Potter himself...

-Wait... Wait a bloody minute!- Potter. Potter was right there!.

It was then that his confusion knew no bounds and he cleared his weakened throat, as loudly as he could possibly manage it, before opening his mouth to question the awful bush at the back of the Know-It-All's head:

"What on Earth is going on here, Mrs Granger?"

Like the sudden flash of lighting before thunder his own question seemed to still the very air around him. For a frustratingly long second the whole lot seemed to have been turned to stone right were they stood and then:

"SEVERUS SNAPE!. Where in the bloody Hell have you been?" Potter's absolutely livid roar rent the air and the whole crowd just galvanized into motion. He blinked, utterly astonished. Onyx eyes widened with uncomprehending disconcertion as he looked around, straight into the faces of more than half the members of the former Order of the Phoenix and a truly weird assortment of strangers that were dressed like muggle police-officers.

"I needed some respite from all the infernal racket that you were creating with that table and decided to go out for a short walk"

Silence...

The kind of startled quietude that is thick and hard and about as heavy as molasses seemed to have descend over his intriguingly astonished audience. Then Potter moved towards him with the speed of a cheetah:

"YOU BLOODY BASTARD!. You didn't go out for a "short walk," you've been gone for seven hours!. I've turned London upside down searching for you!"

He was so gob-smacked that he laughed, laughed and LAUGHED, hysterically, right into the absolutely bloodless face of Harry Potter. The boy was obviously enraged. His green eyes were shooting daggers that should have already murdered him twice over and the uncomfortable-looking crowd that surrounded them had started to back away from the ferociously looking youth with a healthy kind of wariness.

"Don't be ridiculous, boy!. I was never lost. I'm a 40 year old man, for goodness sake!. I have been looking after myself for far longer than you've been alive, Potter, and I seem to have survived well enough, without this kind of histrionics" His tone alone should have turned the whelp into living stone. He himself was more than maddened by the presumptuousness of the creature. To treat him, HIM!, as if he were some kind of... helpless toddler... It was a humiliation beyond endurance!. He would not tolerate being screamed at, in public, no less, by this utter bastard!.

Verdant eyes filled with tears. Enraged, distressed, truly heart-broken tears that kept falling silently, like ghosts, down Potter's cheeks... The boy trembled from head to toes as he stood there, all broken eyes and fiercely gritted jaw, as if poised for war.

"You don't understand anything, Severus!. You don't even see what you've done to me. To all of us!. We wanted to celebrate your improving health with you, show our gladness at your return to the world of the conscious. But everything is just... IMPOSSIBLE... with you!

We ended up searching for you all morning long. We gave up on lunch and rest. Abandoned the chance to enjoy this one Sunday away from work, so that we could find out WHAT IN THE BLOODY HELL HAD HAPPENED TO YOU!. We called in favors to every single person that we could think of!. We fought like cat and dog between us. We've been running all over the place, trying to find you. Some of us even cried because of you and you... you just... WENT OUT FOR A BLOODY WALK!... YOU... YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTELY SELFISH BASTARD!...”

TBC...

Ch12

Ch14