The voice under all silences. Chapter 15

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 15
 

The week started with the abhorrent realization that Potter had apparently demanded to be given all of his accumulated time off and had taken a three-month vacation in order to look after him.

His ears had thundered with the most absolute shock upon receiving the terrible news and he'd just sat there, literally numb with distress, as the bastard smiled at him with that cocky self-satisfaction while he prepared Severus' breakfast to the same disconcertingly fussy standards of the previous days.

"I hope you'll try the scones today, Severus. Draco did insist that you are rather partial to the things"

He looked down when the auror finally placed his tea before him, black eyes registering all that silver cutlery and crisply folded white napkin with a sense of foreboding that he could not shake.

"This is all so... excessive, Mr. Potter" That one sentence simply exploded from his lips in a harsh, overwhelmed whisper and the boy lifted his face to stare at him, bright smile dimming slightly as his attention was also directed to the table.

"You think that a single cup of tea and two scones with strawberry jam is too much breakfast?" A slight sharpness now tainted the irksome, cheerful tone that the little menace had been regaling his ears with, so far. A frustrated hand raked that creepily tangled mess of dark curls when the child pulled on his own hair with visible exasperation.

"You are taking a whole set of very strong potions, Severus. You need to eat something decent!. Malfoy assures me that you are reasonably fond of these particular items, so... for once in your life, can't you just... eat your breakfast without us having to go to battle over it?"

He disliked in the extreme that insultingly paternalistic attitude. His mouth thinned with resentment and he took one single deep breath before attempting to explain himself. Again.

"This is not about the food..."

"It is not? "

Potter's sudden snap to attention brought him the same kind of vindictive pleasure that he used to enjoy as a teacher. Emerald colored eyes lowered once more to examine the dratted table with a new and puzzled focus.

"What is it about, then?"

He was floored by the creature's inability to see the obvious. By the, apparently genuine, lack of understanding that implied a certain amount of... respect... on the brat's part. Towards himself.

"This whole... thing... it looks like... I don't know!. I feel as if it'll be a sacrilege to spoil this lovely ensemble"

Potter blinked at him gormlessly:

"Lovely?. You think that something I've done is lovely?" The radiance of the smile that followed that bizarre question could have blinded a supernova. He could not fathom what it was about his own pointed complaint that could have provoked that kind of joy in the little brat, but... well, it was all rather... irregular.

He stared at the smile dumbly. Embarrassed color spreading slowly all over his ghastly pale features as the other man just... GLOWED... at him!.

Nobody had ever ignited into... shine... on the receiving end of one of his... objections.

"Er... Mmmn... Severus?... You were saying?"

He blinked in dismayed rush to... recover... the decorum that he'd so very briefly abandoned. He was irked with himself and with the child. He was at the very edge of a truly shameful loss of proper dignity. But he could not, for the life of him, understand why on Earth he felt the sudden urge to just... run out of the room.

He could not fathom the cause of his unease. He knew only that he was very bothered by the obvious oddities of the situation, but could not actually pinpoint what, exactly, was so wrong about it.

"I don't know how to explain it, Potter. Just... look at yourself. You are drinking your coffee in the most disturbing mug that I've ever seen!. The sight of it alone is a migraine-inducing nightmare..."

The boy looked perfectly floored.

"This is about my mug being too ugly for you?"

"No!"

"It isn't too ugly?"

"No. I mean, yes. Potter!... Pay attention, for Salazar's sake!. This is about the fact that you are drinking that... beverage of yours from a perfectly ordinary monstrosity of a mug while I... I... I seem to have been served by Luc's very own house elves. There is all these silver and... the lemon wedges. The cup itself looks like some antique museum piece. It's just... too much!"

Confused green eyes turned amused in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

"I see... you are spooked because I'm treating you too well"

His blood froze when he realized that the child was totally right and what that particular insight said about him could fill entire libraries of misery.

His head lowered and his thin, trembling hand rose towards the handle of that too-delicate cup. Cold, long fingers curled around the comforting warmth that was emanating from the pearl colored porcelain in instinctive response to their owner's sudden need to ground himself.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of, Severus. Neither of us was responsible for the way we were brought up, you know?. That fault rests with the adults who surrounded us at the time”

"My childhood is no business of yours, auror Potter. I resent the fact that you assume yourself entitled to trample all over my private life without actually having ever been invited to do so"

Potter chuckled. A small, soft sound that attempted to fill the kitchen with warm gentleness:

"Ouch!. You are in fine form this morning, I see. All that harshness and you haven't even taken a sip of my perfectly brewed tea."

His stomach twisted at the very idea of consuming any food and he pushed his chair back with a loud and jarring screech.

"I am not hungry. If you will excuse me, I'll..."

"I shall NOT excuse you!" Potter's face was beyond livid. He had risen, almost as if yanked upwards by invisible strings, and now stood there: all rigid muscles and a face as dark as thunder. He seemed more like a fighter about to engage in blood-curling battle than the man who had smiled at him so brightly only a second ago.

His dark eyes narrowed with the most absolute disconcertion and he breathed slowly, in and out, before he ventured a very quiet:

"I beg your pardon?"

"You will sit at the table and drink the whole bloody tea, Severus Snape!. You'll eat your blasted scones, filled to burst with that particularly hard to find brand of strawberry jam. I had to travel all the way to bloody Leeds to buy the stupid thing and I don't even like Strawberry jam, for Merlin's sake!"

He was stunned into floored immovability.

"Potter..."

"Do not “Potter” me!. I had it with the prickly attitude!. You sit there like a ruffled cat and do nothing but complain. Then, when you are done with that, you just... run away. Every. Bloody. Time!. There is nothing so terrible here, Severus. IT'S JUST BREAKFAST!. Would it truly be so hard for you to leave all that suspicion behind for just a second and eat something?. You must be hungry, I know that you must be. You hardly ate any dinner whatsoever...

I'll go have a shower or something, if it's too much for you to have breakfast with me here, but... for Godric's sake, just... sit down!"

The rant seemed to have drained the auror, somehow. Dulled green eyes lowered towards the table, as if their owner could not bear looking at him for a single second longer.

He returned to his seat with stiff reluctance. Throat constricted with the weight of about a million and one words that he could have uttered: angry words. Caustic, berating ones. Defensive. Outraged. Fierce...

He detested the whole concept of the child ordering him, HIM!, to eat his food as if he were some kind of unruly little urchin, but was weary of opening up yet another volley of anger between them both.

The auror's exhalation rent the air with the impact of an exploding, dangerously frustrated blast of sheer vexation and the very next sound that he heard was the thunderous pounding of the heels of those strange shoes that Potter had been wearing as he abandoned the kitchen in stormy silence.

Left alone with his luxuriously set breakfast Severus sighed uneasily.

One pale hand rose to rub wearily at the generously large bridge of his nose and his eyes closed tiredly.

He was, truly, not that hungry. But the idea of abandoning the food, only to be berated because of it at some point in the future, really bothered him more than he could bear. He knew that he owed the creature utter obedience... It had been quite pointedly demanded of him during that blasted avowal that he'd been -so very cleverly- tricked into...

That awareness filled him with nothing short of humiliated hostility. He wished himself away from the blasted boy's moody clutches, but knew himself to be as firmly trapped as a moth tangled within the deathly coils of a spider's web...

Trembling fingers lifted the ridiculously beautiful tea-cup and he drank the cold brew in one single, forced gulp. He felt no pleasure in the act. No peace. No sense of either comfort or satisfaction beyond the mere understanding that he... he was obeying the orders of another hated master once more and that would, hopefully, keep someone whom he loved with all of his heart away from harm ...

-For Draco- He thought as he cut open the scones and filled their soft crumb with the rich ruby colored jam -I'm doing all of this for Draco- He reminded himself fiercely every single time that he took a bite and, if the small, delicate treats that he had always delighted in tasted like ashes in his mouth, he was at least honest enough to understand that it had all been his own fault, in a way.

Potter... Potter had tried to give him some leeway, but he had pushed and pushed against the man until he'd virtually forced him to use verbal force. It didn't really matter if the child had intended or not for his request, that he sit back and eat, to be an actual order. It had been one. And, as such, he had to obey it. The humiliation of it all engulfed his senses. Entrapped his mind in a never-ending loop of deep resentment and he sat in his chair, all fierce rigidity and infuriated dignity, like an old warrior who has suddenly found himself to be utterly unable to retaliate, save himself or even simply... disobey. Knowing himself to be totally lost and conquered. Rightfully defeated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The morning went from bad to worse as the hours passed...

The boy huffed in a corner and regaled him intermittently with intense little looks that stressed him beyond endurance. He was bored enough to howl and the ever-increasing tension between them was not doing any favors to his already thin hold over his temper.

His arm throbbed and his head whirled with all kinds of noxious thoughts. He felt maddened with the utter insecurity of not knowing just what, exactly, the child expected from him. Was this, then, to be the sum total of his existence from this day forth? Was he to be slowly driven into the utter indignity of insanity, via the most useless idleness, while the world continued on without his input, just outside of these walls?. The thought alone horrified him to the point of paralyzing terror. He could not imagine any fate worse than this one!.

"Severus?"

Potter's voice called him so suddenly that he startled. Black eyes, veiled with the perfect neutrality of a man used to hiding, confronted the emerald gaze that was trained upon him:

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

Restless hands pulled at thick locks of short black hair and the boy exhaled air in a stressed half-snort that seemed to explode like the lash of a whip in the thick silence.

"What were you thinking, just now?. You were looking... I don't know. Sick"

He blinked slowly. Shocked beyond response by the sudden awareness that the auror could, indeed, read him like a book.

The sole notion was enough to make him break out into a cold sweat. He was used to the idea that the privacy of his own thoughts was impenetrable. He relished the fact that his motivations had never truly been exposed to another, unless he himself had decided to do so. He was used to absolute solitude, in everything that he ever did or contemplated, and the idea that his mind was being plundered...

"It was you!" Crystal clear recollection of the events of the day before had arrived with a perfect kind of new understanding to his mind. He remembered the feeling of somebody trying to read him as he'd sat on that park bench. He remembered the fear that he'd felt, the absolute certainty that another's thoughts were in his head...

Potter frowned and he looked straight at him from his perch on the chair that he'd dragged to the window. The bright light that was filtering in through the curtains played on his features, turning that strangely unfamiliar face into a magnificent study of golden-tinged masculine perfection. Emerald eyes shone, like bright jewels, under the raised lines of thick, ebony colored eyebrows.

"Excuse me?"

He heard the carefully modulated question. Detected, without any trouble, the boy's reluctant request for him to expand upon his own cryptic accusation, but his senses could do nothing except stare silently. Straight into the eyes of the child whom he'd been utterly convinced will never, not even after a million years of relentless practice, master the ancient art of Legilimency.

"You tried to breach me, Potter!. Yesterday, while I was out. I sensed someone's attack. You attempted to use Legilimency on me!"

The auror shot out of his chair as if poked with a hot rod. Emerald eyes alive with the kind of outraged fury that only Gryffindors can truly pull off while in the wrong.

"Attack? I was not attacking you, Severus. I was trying to find you!"

Black eyes iced over with the most absolute disdain that they could contain.

"You were trying to find me... yes, of course!. How could I have forgotten the fact that I am a grown up man who has survived TWO BLOODY WARS, no less!. I have absolutely no need to be coddled by the man who has enslaved me, of all people!"

The boy's pale face looked absolutely stricken.

"You don't believe me...? You think that I... that I was trying to harm you?. Gosh! You are so hung up on the ridiculous idea that I've forced that vow on you out of some twisted need for revenge that you just... REFUSE TO SEE WHAT IS MORE THAN BLOODY OBVIOUS!"

He did not like the look of things, not in the slightest. Potter had started to advance towards him and he felt utterly at a disadvantage. Seated, as he still was, on the couch. He did not like the look on that green gaze, either. Nor the extreme paleness of the boy's normally golden colored features.

He pushed himself into a standing position, too. Stood there, back ramrod straight and dark eyes fierce, as he followed the child's approach with teeth-gritting trepidation.

"What is obvious is that you attempted to read my mind without my express permission to do so, Mr. Potter!" He stated with a tone that was sharp enough to draw blood. "What is obvious is that you feel a very... disrespectful... disregard for all: My privacy. My age and, also, my abilities!.

You scream and wave your arms and pout incessantly whenever I accuse you of tricking me into your detestable care, but the truth is that, for all your avowals of good faith, you humiliated me IN PUBLIC the very first time that I so much as stepped outside the walls of this... little beige cage... that you've placed me in!”

Potter's furious growl resembled so accurately the absolutely hair-raising roar of an enraged lion that Severus took one single step back.

"You are ill!. Weakened to the point that the short journey from St. Mungo's to here drained you completely. You could hardly walk when I brought you home. You almost collapsed on the lift, for Godric's sake!. Then you went ahead and fell asleep on a sofa that's too short for you and I was idiotic enough to decide that fighting with me had already stressed you out so much that I should just... let you be, at least for the night...

You were not looking particularly rested when you woke up and I was reasonably certain that you couldn't have been feeling well enough to even reach the bloody lobby, Severus. Let alone wander around London FOR SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT!"

He was so incensed that his hands fisted with frustration. His missing wand was a painful reminder of just how... utterly powerless he truly was to respond to this little jerk in exactly the way that he so richly deserved.

"You were worried about me, Mr. Potter?. How... quaint. Do you thoughtlessly launch an intrusive mental attack against all of us: little, fragile sheep that you so devotedly care for, Oh, great Saviour, or is this a privilege that you reserve only for Death Eaters?"

The whole couch rose in the air. It shook and trembled about three feet above the ground as the boy shivered with what appeared to be uncontrollable rage. The curtains fluttered, as if trapped within the damaging vortex of a windless, invisible tornado and the very air around them seemed to be charged to capacity with a veritable storm of out of control magic.

"Potter! What do you think you are doing? Master this magic of yours. At once!"

The little brat seemed to have been paralyzed. He stood there: barely five paces away, rooted to the spot as if nailed to the ground. Widened green eyes clashed with his own and he was suddenly informed in an obnoxiously stuttering whisper:

"I can't!. There's just... too much of it!. It's refusing my command!"

Severus knew true fear then. Absolute abject terror the likes of which he hadn't had to confront since that ghastly night in the shack...

His senses reeled as he focused intently on all that magic and discovered that it was centered, in turn, upon himself.

There was an ever-increasing pressure that was threatening to crush him as all that power seemed to search for him inside the room. He understood that trying to run away from it would be absolutely pointless. It'll eventually catch up with him and then... then what?...

He could not even begin to enumerate all the ways in which the undirected excess of Potter's own magic could harm him. He, who was specially susceptible to all magic. Who could be, literally, poisoned to death by the toxic venom that was still running through his veins if he were to be exposed to too much sorcery...

His blood ran cold as the essence of the boy's incredibly powerful magic finally zeroed in on him.

Potter gasped and attempted to come near, but he was unable to take a single step closer.

"Severus!"

He stared then, straight into the horrified eyes of the owner of all this energy, as it coiled around him, like a thread intending to enfold him.

He saw it at that point: the absolutely beautiful pure essence that lay at the very core of Potter's Power. It was made of light indeed... It was... pearled and golden, pinkish in a few spots and mostly warm...

It embraced him and covered him, from the top of his head to the very tip of his toes, and he was lifted, like the couch had been before him, up into the thickened air.

He was suspended in the middle of the lounge for what felt like only a second, twirling slowly around and around, above the desperately horrified Potter as the magic rushed all around him. Within him. Ran through his old body as if his clothes and skin, his hair and muscles, his very bones where simply... absent.

Then he felt a sudden jerk. The warm power turned colder when it encountered the ward upon his arm. He felt it poking at the protective binds repeatedly, attempting to unravel the charms that held the shield together with almost violent intent...

The ward gave with a faint crack of broken enchantments and he felt Potter's own energy burrowing underneath it. Sinking into his wounded limb like the probe of a geologist. His arm seemed to be engulfed then by fire: cursed, merciless fire. Fierce pain shot outwards from it, making him writhe in the most God-awful agony...

He gritted his teeth savagely, attempting to ride out the onslaught of this torment, but the strength of it was way fiercer than his own stubborn determination. He knew that he was screaming when his still weakened throat began to throb and he heard Potter almost sobbing underneath him in flailing desperation.

He did not know long it took...

He only knew that one second he was trapped within a web of sheer agony and the next he'd been lovingly lowered back onto the couch...

The magic left as suddenly and speedily as it had arrived and he could do nothing at all but close his dark eyes and attempt to recover from the attack.

He felt sickened to his very stomach and absolutely livid with the little jerk.

"Severus?"

Potter dared to touch his cheek with trembling fingers and he opened his eyes to glare at him with so much hatred that the bastard's hand was pulled hastily away.

"Severus, are you hurt?. I'll... I'll... Here!... Let me help you sit up, so that I can see what..."

Wide hands held him once again. Forced his shoulders right off the couch and he, literally, saw red.

How dare the absolute menace grab him in any way after the stunt he'd just pulled off?.

He was so incensed that he growled straight into that young, pale face with murderous venom. His hands coiled within the cloth of Potter's shirt and he all but lifted the brat half off the floor, in order to whisper menacingly at him:

"If you ever, EVER AGAIN!, perform any kind of unwelcome magic upon my person, Harry Potter, I swear on your mother's memory that I shall dedicate the rest of my miserable existence to the pleasurable task of making you pay very dearly indeed for that transgression!. Am I making myself clear?"

The boy swallowed visibly. Utterly terrified green eyes gazed up at him with so much dread that he felt suddenly sickened. He could not tolerate seeing those awful emotions within these beautiful orbs that were so reminiscent of Lily's...

Perfectly disgusted with himself, with the boy and with the whole sorry drama he pushed the creature away from him and began the task of raising.

That's when the auror seized him again. Golden fingers curled around his bony wrist and held him immobile, the strength inherent in the touch was forceful enough for him to understand that he'd never be free of it, unless the boy himself decided to release him.

"Potter, what on Earth...?"

He never actually finished that sentence. It was swallowed by gob-smacked surprise when the creature blatantly interrupted him:

"Severus, look at yourself!. LOOK!. You've just... pushed me down to the floor with both hands!. And you were using your left arm to help yourself up from the couch. Your arm.... your arm is healed!"

Ebony colored eyes widened impossibly and his gaze lowered down to stare straight at the wrist held within the fierce circle of Potter's fingers.

He felt no pain on it at all, he could...

He pulled it away from the auror's hold and turned the limb this way and that in the space between them. It felt completely at ease!. There was not a twinge of pain to be found anywhere... The broken bones that had so stubbornly refused to be repaired by Skele-Gro had been forced to surrender to the power of Potter's wayward magic. The brat's uncontrolled energy had decided to... heal him, when it could have caused him so much harm instead...

He was so perfectly astounded that he turned his dark eyes upon that glowing, exultant face and asked the question that was persistently hammering his mind with a voice that was awash with wonder:

"Why, Potter?... Why would your magic do this, when it had the chance to destroy me so completely?"

The boy shook his head almost wearily. Bright green eyes dimmed, somehow, on the receiving end of that utterly puzzled question.

"It did it because it could, Severus. Because it wanted to do it. Because you are not my enemy and I don't hate you enough to see you suffer. Not in any way!. Not if I can help it.

I think my magic knows where my heart lies when it comes to you and was trying to help me... "

 

TBC...

Ch14

Ch16