The voice under all silences. Chapter 16

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 16

"It lifted you in the air and shook you like a rag doll?. Hmmm!. That's really... intriguing"

Luc's thoughtful caressing of his perfectly shaved jaw gave him the shivers. He decided to correct immediately the terrible misconception that had caught the fancy of his best friend's twisted mind:

"It did not “shake me like a doll,” Luc. It... it..." He faltered when no suitable word came to his mind, other that the most unfortunate of choices.

His cheeks colored with discomfited chagrin and his gaze lowered towards the table.

His thoughts whirled with the disconcerting acknowledgement that he could not understand the peculiarly affectionate behavior of Potter's magic towards him. He had felt the same awareness of fond warmth coming off the thing during that accursed Wizard's Oath that he'd been tricked into swearing...

"It...?"

He frowned, having become so tangled in his own thoughts that he'd forgotten the awful mistake he'd just committed. He'd been idiotic enough to open his big mouth in front of Luc, no less. He should have known better. Attempting to clarify his friend's erroneous assumption had been a very unfortunate choice. Luc was curious and well learned, he liked... No. He was obsessed with puzzles: magical, muggle, elven, goblin... The man didn't much care where they came from, as long as they contained an enigma of some kind. It had always been like this. Always!. Any quirk of magic that even hinted at a mystery, no matter how small, attracted his aristocratic friend like a moth and he'd just... waved the promise of an intriguingly new magical behavior in front of a man whom he knew to be curious enough to pull down every book in that vast collection of his, in tireless search for an explanation!.

"Severus?. You were saying...?"

-Oh, Dear!- Luc had caught his hesitation and was waiting, like a hound who'd scented blood, for his boundless curiosity to be satisfied in precise and gory a detail.

"It... It enfolded me" He finally offered in so defensive a tone that all three of his blond companions lifted equally annoying sets of haughty, golden eyebrows.

"It enfolded you? As in... it embraced you, Severus?" Cissy's question broke the silence with that gentle request for clarification and he'd never detested the sound of her voice more, in the whole of his life.

At the opposite side of Potter's dining table, Draco proceeded to spit a mouthful worth of tea back into his cup with unusual inelegance.

"Potter's magic dared to hug you?. I can't believe the boldness of the man!"

A sudden moue of pain contorted his godchild's features and Severus' own eyebrow rose, guessing that Cissy had kicked the boy, hard, under the table. His assumption was proved correct by the shocked hiss that followed:

"Awww... Mother!"

"You should not speak thus of our host, Draco. It is a detestable sign of ill breeding that I shall not tolerate in these circumstances!. We owe that man too much to disparage him in public.

It is even less appropriate here, within the walls of his own home, for Salazar's sake!"

Luc decided to stay out of the argument and, eventually, the whole topic was delicately ignored, quietly brushed under the carpet in order to keep a dignified peace between mother and son.

Severus could have kissed Cissy for her prissy formality. She'd just saved him from a fate worse than death at the hands of her husband's legendary curiosity, after all.

"How on Earth did it manage to cure you, Severus?. I have it on good authority that Healer Jones tried every trick in the book to get your arm fixed.

Lucius here and Draco, too, were right terrors to the poor woman and don't even start me on Potter's ghastly behavior... It was an absolute circus in that emergency room!" Cissy shivered delicately and her glare, so fiercely directed towards the sheepish men of her family, managed to express better than any words could ever have the extent of her displeasure with their actions.

Draco shrugged his shoulders elegantly:

"I was only asking her about the potions, Mother!. And the effectiveness of all those Gaelic charms that she was using. And, maybe, I got a little worried about the accuracy of that contraption of hers that was constantly beeping. Adamantly insisting that Severus's magic was right there when we all could plainly see that it was, actually, missing"

"Draco!"

Luc's incensed bark halted his son's words abruptly. They all froze and a thick, uneasy, silence fell over the table. Every eye turned towards him then. Equally chagrined expressions appeared on all three aristocratic faces as his closest friends on Earth, his only family, really, waited for his reaction to his godson's lack of tact.

"I'm sorry, Godfather. I wasn't trying to insult you, I swear!. I was just... It's what happened, for Merlin's sake!"

"I am not offended, Draco. I..." He exhaled through his nose, irked with frustration. He'd never had much time for things like this: careful, painful talks about... emotions.

Feelings, of any kind, and all their mystifying accompanying concessions, were just... too complicated for him. They terrified him.

He was, generally, too shy to deal with anything of the kind out in the open. Too unaware of his own emotions to pay them any attention most of the time...

He was the kind of man who wouldn't know how he truly felt about something. Or even someone, unless it was pointed out to him with foot-long glowing letters.

He used to be different. Almost a lifetime ago...

But having perfect awareness of his feelings, of his likes and dislikes, had brought only misery to a teenager as conscious of his own physical failings as he'd been. Confidence in himself had never been a strength of his, unless there were potions involved or the dark arts...

"I appreciate your blunt approach, Draco. It's much better than everyone else's infernal tiptoeing around the issue"

"Thanks a lot, Severus. See if I bother to protect your sensibilities next time!"

"Lucius!" Cissy's fierce glare reduced the one that her husband was directing at Severus to the realms of the pathetic. They all flinched with equal shivers of wary respect at her increasing discontent with them. She was a Black of Pure Blood. She'd been Bella's little sister!. And what she knew about the darker side of hexing could fill continent upon continent and still need more space...

There was a small beat of silence. Twinkling cutlery being uncomfortably used to mix this cup of tea or that other one, to add another spoonful of sugar here or a splash of cream there... Until Draco broke the uncomfortable impasse:

"So... Let's see if I've got this right, Godfather: Potter healed you, without actually meaning to do it, and now both of you are agonizing over it because you can't explain how he did it. Is that it?"

His jaw went rigid with the effort of suppressing a frustrated little rant of his own. It wasn't his boy's fault that he tended to sound slightly condescending, that was just a Malfoy trait. Luc did the same all the time...

"Yes, Draco. I believe that's it" He replied, a bit sharply.

"Why do we care about the how of it, anyway?. Your arm is fully functional again, you no longer spark like a blue firework every time that someone performs magic around you. We can go ahead and bring you to the Manor. You'll be home, where you belong, Godfather!. And we'll be able to concentrate properly on figuring out what to do about your power without having all these gryffindors muddling the waters. That's all that matters, isn't it?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Draco. We can't ignore what's happened. The whole thing is... just too intriguing!. It's making me itch to get back home. I can't wait to grab our copy of “The Maladies of Theorpillius Critt” I seem to remember that he suffered, at one point or another, from acute resistance to healing magic... I wonder how the Medics of the time managed to overcome his difficulties"

"Theorpillius Critt was an absolute nutcase, Father!. He only became famous because he was the kind of hypochondriac who would torment his healers, with one complain or another, to the point that they performed test upon test on him until he became, literally, “allergic” to healing magic. I can't understand why anyone, least of all you, would want to read a whole encyclopaedia-sized tome on the nature of his delusions!"

Luc's intense gray eyes were afire with the most disheartening enthusiasm that Severus had seen on them since the time Kurtis Kolch dared him to find a cure for the Pelut i Bruta* Hex. He'd never had to wade through as many dusty tomes, every single one of them written in a cumbersome variation of ancient Latin, since!.

"It's not about the man himself, Draco. It's about the magic. He was allergic to it, don't you see? Just like Severus here.

That whole arm was impervious to Skele-Gro. It reacted so badly to magic that we had to put your poor Godfather through the trauma of inhabiting a magic dampening room. Even though we knew that, by doing so, we were making it impossible for him to attempt any kind of re-connexion with his own power. We all tore our hair out, trying to fix it!. The healers were stumped. None of your precious potions managed to help. Granger failed in her attempt to find a solution to this blasted conundrum. And I... I have lost precious sleep reading ridiculously occult treatises on aversion to healing until my eyes got crossed!.

I've been trying to figure this out night after night and today I found out that Potter, POTTER!, beat me to the solution with nothing but a spot of accidental magic. It's just too humiliating to be endured, Draco!. I shall not let stone unturned until I find out how he did it!"

Luc's little rant had left them all kind of deflated. And slightly peeved at Potter. It was typical of the blasted gryffindors to take a pass on the hard work and just... stampede their way towards a solution, claiming along the way all the accolades that, by rights, belonged to others.

"Yeah... that kind of sucks, actually."

"Draco!"

"Sorry, Mother!"

Cissy glared balefully at her son and they all froze until she sighed with resigned discontentment. Her soft hand rose to muss up the artfully curled mass of white-blond hair that cascaded around her lovely face with a carefully portrayed weariness.

"How did he lose that control of his, Severus?. That's the part I'm failing to understand in all of this. I've seen Potter under pressure and he is always as cool as a cucumber"

Severus blinked at that, astonished incredulity filling his dark eyes with absolute disconcertion. A million and one memories of the brat's angry face, flushed to the point of almost apoplexy, flitted through his mind as he just sat there and... gaped.

"I can't even begin to imagine where you've got that impression from, Cissy. Potter has the worst kind of hair-triggered temper that I've ever seen. The little jerk is an absolute menace of the worst kind, he's been that way for as long as I've known him and I'm starting to believe that he will cause his own demise, someday soon, while in the throes of one of his own hissy fits!"

All three looked at him with equal amounts of alarmed befuddlement.

"Severus... Are you sure that you are talking about Potter?. Harry Potter?. The Saviour of the Wizarding World and all that? "

Luc's puzzling comment drew his eyebrows together, he could not understand the little looks that they were giving him.

"Why?. Is there more than one of them?" He snarled, absolutely infuriated with their ridiculous reaction. "Of course I'm talking about Potter!. You all saw the way he screamed at me the other night. It was like being attacked by a demented banshee!"

Draco shrugged his elegant shoulders in a small dismissive gesture.

"That unfortunate display... Yes, I agree with you there, Godfather. But then we'll also have to admit that he'd been out of his little gryffindor mind for most of that morning already. Better men have cracked under the same kind of pressure"

Luc's head shook in a disparaging gesture and he stated his opinion on the matter without much mercy for their absent host:

"He was acting like an idiot!. Flooed the Manor and started to scream the most nonsensical drivel I've heard since the Dark Lord himself. He was insisting on speaking to you immediately. Demanded that we hand you over. I've never been subjected to so many brainless accusations in so small a span of time!. Why he expected us to have you when he knew that you couldn't tolerate magic, I'll never understand...

Then I had to sit through a whole half-hour rant on how stubborn you are and let's not forget that ridiculous bout of speculation over which floo destination you'd chose to disappear into. It was one of the longest hours of my life!.

To top it all off, I was forced to suffer the indignity of suggesting that he double-check my own perfectly accurate assessment with Granger, before I could convince him that you couldn't have traveled magically for the very same reasons that made it impossible for you to have come to us, in the first place!"

Silence followed Luc's outraged words, settling over them like a stifling wet blanket.

"You came here of your own free will. Didn't you, Godfather?" Draco's beautiful gray eyes were now narrowed and suspicious. He looked pale and his hands were curled so tightly around the handle of his cup that his knuckles had turned white.

Severus turned perfectly blanc eyes towards him before pronouncing every word clearly:

"Of course I did. He offered this flat as an alternative to a magical location. I didn't want to put your father through the trouble of installing a magical vacuum over the Manor, Draco. You know that. We've had this conversation enough times already”

Challenge flashed within the gaze of the child he loved so dearly:

"Then why was he so convinced that you'd vanished?. Why was he so adamant that you had managed to find some magical means to disappear?. Why would he assume that you'd come to us without bothering to inform him, Godfather? Now that I think back on it... He was kind of certain that we were hiding you."

Luc's aristocratic features had turned to stone and the fierce growl that escaped his pale throat sounded like the explosion of loud thunder.

"That little bastard!..." The chair that he'd been seated at crashed to the floor with an almighty bang when he jumped to his feet. His chest lowered forward, over the wide expanse of the table, in order to stare directly into Severus' own eyes:

"It was an Oath!. Wasn't it?. That's what happened at Hogwarts. You were perfectly fine, after we put your through that ritual. “A few more hours of rest. A day or two, at the most, and you'd have been fit enough to sit up and take visitors” That's what Pomfrey said...

I've been reading the wrong books all along!. I was certain that Potter had mispronounced a word on the Parseltongue incantation. I assumed that he'd put you through this trauma by mistake when we were trying to purge the wound on your neck, or that you'd reacted badly to the magic and, somehow, it had taken your body a few hours to show the first signs of it...

But no. No. That would have never resulted in you losing your magic, unless he'd specifically requested it. Nor would you have ever agreed to live in his home under normal circumstances. Not this calmly, anyway...

You still distrust him. Don't you, Severus?. So many things have changed since the war, but you haven't yet learned about them. By Salazar!... How could I have been so blind?"

Luc's formidable mind was now engaged. It was going along the right tracks, too.

Severus sat in his chair as if turned to stone. His thoughts buzzed, trying to find a way to still the flow of sudden understanding that lit those clever eyes with terrifying awareness. His friend was like a hound in times like this, all sheer brilliance and ruthless intellect. It was the reason why their former Lord had valued Luc's opinion above all others, once his mind was ensnared by the allure of finding the perfect solution to a problem Luc could be terrifyingly logical and very rarely wrong.

Speculative gray eyes were studying his features with a frightening kind of focus. Silence reigned and Severus realized that they were waiting to hear what he would say. There was nothing he could add, though, nothing at all. And his obvious reluctance only spurred Luc into further, even more damaging, speculation:

"I should have seen it sooner, Severus. I can't believe I missed it!...

Your body accepted no magic. None whatsoever. But it allowed him to apparate you straight to St. Mungo's, after you collapsed... It only allowed the healers to put that ward on your arm because it had some fancy, auror-restricted protections on it. Things that he added to it, himself, at the last minute. It allowed his magic, HIS!, to fix what had been broken because he'd caused it to break in the first place!.

Your powers have been linked, that's how he managed to access your Core. Isn't it, Severus?. He... he must have forced you to swear a vow of some kind. A Pledge of Allegiance, a Life-debt contract or even a Wizard's Oath...

Dear Salazar... he did!. Didn't he?. He must have, it's the only thing that makes sense..."

Severus had frozen with shock. He felt as if Luc had plunged him straight into the Arctic ocean by asking him that question.

He was numb from the outside in: mind and tongue and muscles, too. He was perfectly unable to respond to that unwelcome query. He'd sworn secrecy to the brat: SECRECY!. And here was Luc poking his perfect, little nose into things that were better left alone.

A deep sigh escaped his lips and he blinked slowly. He could sense that the others were becoming increasingly frustrated with him and understood that he had... maybe three seconds... to respond before either Draco or Luc gave him up for a lost cause and started to search for an easier source of information.

They'd go to Potter himself. POTTER... Who'd taken one look at his visitors and left them to it, in a show of tactfulness that Severus hadn't been expecting. The auror had retired, presumably to his own room, almost at once. Generously granting him the courtesy of some privacy with his visitors without fuss of any kind ...

Severus didn't want to find out what that oath could do if Potter were to become convinced that he'd broken their terms, the very idea made him feel dizzy with dread. His lips trembled slightly, with the kind of desperation that he very rarely showed, and he responded to his friend with unusual sharpness:

"I'm afraid that I can't give you an answer, Luc. I had reasons for accepting Potter's offer. Reasons that I'm unable to share with you, at the moment. I demand that you back off from this. Now!.

You must do it for my own good, do you understand?. Magic is, sometimes, too literal in what it believes to be a breaching of terms... DO. NOT. PURSUE. THIS, AT ALL!"

"No way!" Draco's growl broke the thick tension and he'd already shot out of his chair and managed to take two steps towards the corridor before his father's frosty tone halted his exit.

"Son... wait a second"

The smoke colored eyes that had accompanied him, through some of the darkest moments of his life, were now glimmering with a shattered kind of understanding. With a fury so profound that it turned their usual pale beauty into a veritable storm of diamond-cold harshness.

"Secrecy... There must have been an element of secrecy to the oath and now You. Are. Not. Allowed. To. Discuss. It. Am I right, Severus?"

Draco gasped, looking absolutely stricken. He was looking straight at him through a fine film of bright tears that turned his gray gaze into the very definition of desolation.

Severus had never been so ashamed of himself in front of these proud people, he felt so wretched that he wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole.

The tense muscles of his neck couldn't support his head any longer and he lowered it, in humiliated mortification, towards the table. His dark hair fell around his face as the ebony locks swung with the movement and he was grateful for the flimsy, obscuring shield that they provided him with.

"I'm going to fix this!. I. Am. Going. To, my friend. Now that I know what really happened it'll be easier to figure out why you reacted that badly to a simple oath.

I can't believe that idiot kept this from me!. I could have been searching for the right solution all along... We'll bring your magic back, Severus, and when we do, Dear Salazar!... when we do we are going to find a way to make Potter regret having even thought of putting you through this kind of misery!"

Luc's incensed whisper forced his head back up. He knew that his ebony gaze was filled with shadows and his pale, ashen visage clearly stressed, but he blinked in what he hoped his companions wouldn't perceive as heartbroken defeat and attempted, quite unsuccessfully, by the look of things, to conjure a weak smile out of... somewhere.

"Let it be, Luc. Please!. I beg of you, just... LET. IT. BE!.

It'll be best for everyone involved if you forget this conversation altogether”

Mutinous resolution flashed within two eerily similar pairs of gray eyes, beautifully matching the outraged expressions painted on the faces of both Malfoy's. These two were among the most stubborn men he'd ever met and Severus understood then, with disheartening certainty, that they'll try something eventually...

"Has he meant you any harm? Have any of his demands managed to... hurt you in any way, Severus?"

He heard the question clearly enough, but the answer simply escaped him at the moment.

Honesty demanded of him to respond with the most assertive negative that he could possibly produce,

but his suspicious nature reminded him of the monster who'd threatened Draco. Of the man who had so easily tricked him. Of the fact that he didn't really know Lily's child and, most probably, had never truly known him...

"I..." His voice faltered as he struggled to form words. It was then that he realized he didn't really know how to explain Potter's bizarre behavior.

He picked up the ridiculously exquisite tea-cup that the boy had given him and started twirling it around in his fingers, pondering Cissy's strange reaction to it.

A smile, equal parts secretive and pleased, had appeared on her lips when he'd dragged the whole set out of the cupboard: silver cutlery, teapot and all corresponding items. Every single one a perfect match to the breathtaking beauty of this delicate cup...

Humiliation had befallen him soon after, though. Once it became puzzlingly obvious that Potter owned no other such items. They hadn't been able to find another cup or even a few glasses. Nothing usable, anyway, apart from the boy's own, and ghastly, coffee mug...

Luc had been forced to transfigure three extra china sets from a few cookies crumbs. Cookies that had been intended as a gift for him, but had ended up being sacrificed to provide his visitors with the bare necessities for their impromptu afternoon tea.

"He gave me this and all these ridiculous silver cutlery, too" He finally muttered gruffly, thoughtful dark eyes fixed on the lovely object that he held.

"You've seen the flat, haven't you?. The whole place is... bare, but if you were to set foot in my own room... It looks as if it belongs to a different house altogether"

Black eyes zeroed in on his friend's face, flustered perplexity making them look unusually vulnerable and his voice, when he finally resumed speaking, was lowered into a bewildered whisper:

"There's no comfort that I lack. Not one, Luc!. There are huge high-backed chairs. My bed is big enough for a whole Quidditch team. A radiator keeps that one room warm round the clock...

The desk is made out of polished mahogany. There's parchment of the highest quality and quills just like yours. There's ink, too. Inside a pot that looks as if it should belong to the bloody Minister of Magic...

He's bought my favorite jam from it's original source, apparently. That's in Leeds, For Merlin's sake!. And he brews my tea Every. Bloody. Morning, with the same kind of focus that I'd use to mix Veritaserum!" He shuddered, finally coming to a halt. Every anxious word echoed around his rigid figure for a second before vanishing into the stunned silence that followed.

He was shocked with himself, unable to understand why he felt so agitated about being treated... decently for once!.

He was more than merely confused, though. He was truly spooked by the overwhelming edginess that gripped him every time that he thought about the blasted brat's inexplicable behavior.

"Why do you trust him, Luc?. I can't understand it!. You all seem to have come to some kind of peace with him. It's so strange to see you here, in his house... I remember laughing about his idiocy with you. I must have heard you and the Dark Lord plot his murder together about a million times!.

And you, Draco, how many times did I have to pull the two of you away from each other's throats at school?. He used Sectumsempra on you, for Merlin's sake!"

His friend considered him carefully. Puzzlingly neutral features revealing surprisingly little of Luc's inner thoughts.

"I"d have told you just this morning that I trust him because he means you no harm, Severus. But now... I am not so sure any more. I can't believe he tried this!. An oath... a forced oath by the look of things. It's just... So stupid!... Why would he do such a thing? The more I think on it the less sense it makes. What the Hell did he demand, anyway?. Not knowing the details is driving me up the wall!"

Severus contemplated that response carefully. He was surprised by Luc's relatively mild reaction, his friend tended to be ruthlessly vengeful, at the best of times. The fact that he seemed to be merely frustrated indicated that he truly believed Potter to be... ultimately harmless.

"That doesn't answer my question, Luc. And I, definitely, can't answer yours.

I only know that I almost died resenting that child with all my heart. I woke up and he was there. I assumed that he wanted to harm me. Avenge the things I did during the war, but... there's no denying that his uncontrolled magic decided to heal my arm. It could have hurt me so badly and yet...IT DIDN'T!, I can't get my head around the idea...

This is about intentions, Luc: Potter's intentions. We both know that magical results, whether they start life directed by a wand or not, follow the same basic rule: the intention of the wizard controls the

magic..."

It was immediately apparent that his friend disagreed:

"What he ultimately intends is beside the point, Severus. He has done this!. He can't be allowed to get away with it. I can't ignore his behavior. I won't!.

I'll find a way around this vow and he'll be forced to deal with you like a sane adult. Trapping you into some sort of arrangement will not give him what he wants, I can't believe he even tried it!. You just... Wait. Until. I. Put. My. Hands. On. That... IDIOT!"

As usual, it took Cissy's unique brand of reasoning to bring her men to heel.

"Severus has made himself perfectly clear, Lucius!. The last thing that he needs is for us stick our oar in and aggravate his predicament even further. We could be putting him in danger by stretching the parameters of a vow that we don't fully understand. Confronting Potter in any way may cause untold harm to our friend!"

Her assessment was absolutely spot on, of course. There was nothing the Malfoy men could do, so they sat rigidly on their chairs and... fumed!.

The tension that rose around them was thick enough to be held between bare fingers.

The tea that Draco had prepared cooled slowly as it remained, utterly forgotten, within their cups like a pleasure that belonged far away, to happier people...

A sense of absolute despondency fell over them. Trapping them within it, threatening to drown them...

It was Cissy who rallied first. Taking a deep breath, she turned around and stared at him with her soft blue eyes. A pale, trembling smile was fixed on her lips and her voice, when she finally spoke, was careful and gentle:

"Where did you go last Sunday, Severus?. You never said. Luc told Potter to leave the histrionics aside and just... wait you out. We were certain that you'd be back within the hour, only... you weren't. It was hard, you know?. Explaining to all those gryffindors that you are the kind of man who takes care of himself... None of them listened to us!. I've never been so exasperated with so many people at once!. They even called the muggle police, didn't you hear all the racket?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. Black eyes blindly contemplating the table as his mind returned to the events of last Sunday...

"I saw the police, but it didn't cross my mind that I was their target. Why should it have?. I've got nothing to do with them. I assumed that something had happened in town, something humongous!. That some idiot had stolen the Queen's Jewels or the like..."

"How is it possible to have the whole special division of the muggle police searching every street for you, picture in hand, and still evade them?. The kind of skill that you showed out there has had the lot of them baffled since it happened, Godfather!. They believe that you are some sort of... super agent, like that Jess Bob of theirs"

Draco's comment made him frown. He'd done nothing out of the ordinary. He'd reacted on instinct alone, following the same reflexes that had helped him survive the blasted war.

"I didn't react very favorably to their presence, Draco. Police remind me so much of the aurors that I just... kept away from them"

His godson looked at him with a rueful kind of compassion:

"You are going to have to stop doing that, you know?. You happen to be about the shiniest pillar there is to wizarding society right now. If it ever came to be known that you don't trust the aurors... I don't know how the public might react. This thing with the muggle police has been enough of a fiasco as it is!"

He was so shocked that he stammered like an idiot:

"Shiny... pillar... of society?... Wizarding society?"

Luc snorted. Cissy smiled. And his boy... his boy just looked at him, soft gray eyes alive with the kind of sly amusement that used to give him a headache, back in the days when his life had still been... normal.

"Yes, Godfather. Having you in the family has given us more clout nowadays than being THE MALFOYS... How does that feel?"

He almost choked on his own saliva, so great was his astonishment.

"You must be joking, Draco. The very idea is... Preposterous!"

"Preposterous or not it is the truth, Severus. There has been a media frenzy since the severity of your condition was “leaked” to the press.

It didn't help any that Potter went over to Azkaban and arrested healer Peterssen on the spot.

When you bring down a man like that in so public a way, under charges of torturing an innocent civilian, no less, things have a tendency to... reach the worst kind of ears.

The connexion to you was so obvious that it immediately became front-page news.

Add to that the fact that your Award Ceremony was canceled twice, on account of your ill health, and you have the perfect cocktail of outrage and melodrama that the Prophet loves to print."

The most terrible anxiety seized him then. He detested the very concept of having a bunch of strangers follow his every action. The idea that his life was a matter of public interest revolted him to the point of stomach-twisting nausea.

"I had no idea..."

"Of course you didn't, Severus. Harry worked very hard to keep you away from the crazed masses. He went as far as placing you under auror protection, after that overenthusiastic fan of yours managed get into your hospital room and tried to feed you grapes... I've never seen that boy so furious!" Cissy's soft hand covered his own in a reassuring gesture, if she'd been aiming to calm him then her failure was abysmal. He looked at her with horrified dark eyes.

"I remember that. I thought she was a nurse!. I even spoke to her, told her off for her inappropriate behavior before she left the room in a flood of tears"

Luc's aristocratic features twisted with disdain.

"She's made a killing selling that story. It has been publicized even in France!

How you ate fruit form her hands with your thin lips...

How your dark eyes, so lustrous that they resemble the deep night, focused on her and gave her tiny shivers...

How your wounded voice, rough like the sound of a waterfall, caressed her senses until she was so overwhelmed with lust that she dissolved into a flood of frustrated tears and was forced to abandon your side...

Honestly!. The ghastly poetry alone is enough to turn any sane man's stomach!"

To describe Severus's reaction as merely horrified would had been nothing short of... blasphemy. He was actually truly traumatized!. Rendered speechless by the abject humiliation of hearing himself described in those truly distasteful terms.

Shocked lips parted and he stuttered out the one word that horrified him the most:

"Lust?"

Luc's sharp nod of confirmation was, of course, absolutely unwelcome. He could not even begin to imagine what could be worse than the agony of knowing himself to be the object of such mockery.

He'd been ugly like dark sin all of his life. His every yearning for affection, during his teenager years, had been violently squashed upon discovery.

He'd been laughed at, by the likes of Sirius black and company, to the point of heart-crushing degradation. He'd been called unthinkable things. Reminded again and again, mercilessly, that he was fated to live, and die, in utter loneliness because... who would ever want an ugly thing like him?.

And now... to have perfect strangers attempt to use his unfortunate physique as their weapon of choice to ridicule him even further... It was simply intolerable!.

"How dare she?" He growled so fiercely that even Cissy flinched.

Draco looked at him and smiled with smug satisfaction:

"Potter's tangled her in piles of paperwork. Every time she opens her big mouth he sends Weasley right out to bring her in. He's accused her of stalking. Of impersonating a staff-member of St. Mungo's. Of entering a private room illegally. Of putting your life at risk. Of breaching your privacy. Of using unsanctioned descriptions of your likeness...

If it's legal and you can name it then he is already tried it!. The whole ministry is agog with that little tug of war. They even have bets going on, Severus. I can't believe there are idiots out there mad enough to bet against Potter!.

Having Hermione “The-Lioness-Of-The-Law” Granger giving you pointers when it comes to defend your friends from the clutches of some greedy, little liar has to be the ultimate weapon"

He felt a headache coming. A migraine of troll-like proportions was trying to blind him while he sat there, staring dumbly at Draco and feeling absolutely livid with fury.

"Potter has no right!" He exploded finally, vexed beyond patience "He is single-handedly attempting to ridicule me into the grave!"

Cissy stirred beside him, pretty blue eyes fixed on that ridiculous tea-cup:

"Don't be so hard on him, Severus!. I think it's kind of sweet, really. A tad over the top, of course. And really, really bold. Too bold, maybe... but sweet nevertheless. He tries so hard, the poor dear!... Does he not?"

She could have spoken ancient Hungarian, for all the sense she made to him.

He blinked, absolutely confused. Feeling nothing short of unbalanced by her sly expression. Attempting to unfurl the convoluted nuances of her strange statement only increased the power of his headache.

"He tries hard? I don't think I follow you, Cissy. He does nothing all day except being... odd!.

He makes no sense whatsoever. He has more mood swings than a pregnant woman!.

He is considerate to the point of driving me spare, one second, and the next goes ahead and explodes into a rage for the strangest things..."

Irritatingly, Cissy decided to ignore his obvious exasperation.

"Really?. What kind of things make him mad, Severus?"

He frowned as he thought back over his arguments with Potter.

Looking back on them he could see a strange and very troubling pattern beginning to emerge. Most of their fights had been triggered by his own lack of trust in the boy...

The auror reacted rather badly to Severus' perverse need to rile him. He seemed to detest being ignored or not taken into account... but the absolutely foolproof way to get up Potter's nose was to allow his own instinctive need to relay only on himself to come to the surface...

"He... he wants to help. Or so he insists on screaming at me..."

Draco growled at that, gray eyes turning fierce with a vexed kind of affront that Severus found comforting.

"He screams at you, Godfather?. How dare he?. I'll rip his tongue off..."

Cissy halted the rest of that rant impatiently:

"Draco, Sshh!. You are as bad as Severus when it comes to things like this. Can neither of you see that Potter is just... eager?"

Now godfather and godchild seemed flummoxed, equal looks of mystified befuddlement seized their features.

"Eager?. Eager for what, Mother?"

She smiled brightly, beautifully and... utterly contentedly.

She looked towards her husband and they both exchanged a suspiciously satisfied little look of understanding that forced something very much like terrified nausea to settle in the pit of Severus' stomach.

It was Luc, though, the one who finally answered.

His gaze shone like flawless diamonds as his elegant hand reached out for the stupid cup.

The delicate porcelain was held within those richly ringed fingers with a touch of reverence and his friend's voice sounded both, soft and slightly awed, when it broke the silence.

"You said it yourself, my friend: Intention, Severus...

Intention is at the heart of all magical things. There is nothing in our world more magical than what I believe is happening here. It is not what the boy says that is important, but what he keeps back.

I think he is trying to show you, instead of simply... telling you, because he knows that you won't believe his words. At least not yet.

He is eager to serve, my friend. Eager to serve you!. And the only things stopping the two of you from actually understanding one another are your own refusal to view him as an ally and this inexplicable vow that he's forced upon you..."

TBC...

* A/N: Pelut i Bruta roughly translates as Hairy and Foul.

Ch15

Ch17