The voice under all silences. Chapter 17

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 17

His heartbeat seemed to halt at the sight of that box. It was a polished thing made out of Agarwood. It's almost intoxicating sandalwood-like aroma helped him immediately identify the carefully engraved material as the most precious wood in the world.

Luc had attempted, many years ago, to have a very special jewelery box made out of it for his wife, but had been forced to abandon that idea when confronted with the serious amount of red tape that his request for the amount of wood needed to complete the project had encountered.

Black-market prizes for the thing were so ludicrous that even his extravagant friend had decided to back down and shelve the whole idea:

"It's almost twice as expensive as gold, Severus, a piece of muggle wood, for Salazar's sake!" That had been the last he'd heard on the topic and to find himself now on the receiving end of the very same thing held him riveted to the spot, utterly transfixed.

"Severus?. Is there something wrong?"

Potter's voice reached him as if through a wall built on bricks made out of absolute disconcertion and hopeless confusion.

His dark eyes raked over the exquisite beauty of the dark box. Read, with dumbstruck disbelief, the

lovely legend that had been delicately etched onto the lid in sweeping curling script:

What wealth of grace rests here belongs to Severus Snape...

He understood nothing of it, found no sense to either the words or the gesture...

What truly held him nailed to the spot, though, was the suspicion: the overwhelming certainty that he'd find his wand within... and that idea was so much like hope that he could not cope with the possibility of it being crushed into unthinkable disappointment. Not with this matter...

His fingers lifted the exquisite box and hurled it with trembling gracelessness as far away from himself as he could manage. It slid across the dinning table, where they were still seated, with a hissed whoosh of wood on wood.

Potter's emerald eyes seemed dismayed. They were widened with hurt. Limpid and bright. A perfect rendition of flawlessly genuine sincerity enfolded in wounded disappointment...

For the very first time he realized how heartbreakingly beautiful the boy's eyes really were. How truly unlike his mother's that green gaze had become. These were eyes that knew sorrow in a way that hers had never done...

"Why won't you open it, Severus?. I promise you that the contents won't harm you in any way"

He could not find within himself strength enough to form a single word... so he pushed his chair backwards with an almighty screech. The jarring echoes of that utterly ghastly sound filled the awful silence as he stood and retreated one step. Two. Three...

His ebony gaze remained fixed on that wooden box all along.

He was on the very verge of bolting when the auror finally caught onto his imminent intention to flee.

The young face hardened into a mask that was fierce, determined and about as yielding as the ancient granite that had built Hogwarts:

"You are going to have to answer my dammed question, Severus Snape, and you are going to do it right now!"

His retreat halted, as if he'd been petrified. He knew that his eyes must look wild. His breathing was heavy, ragged. He felt lost to all rationale, devoid of all control...

He understood that he was truly overreacting, but he could not bring himself back towards calm. It was too much. Simply... too much!. He could not deal with the situation in any shape or form.

"You must let me be, Potter!. I have no reason to offer you an explanation for my every action. You can not force me to do it, I have a right to my own privacy!" His growl wavered as he grappled with the overflowing sense of dread that was surging through his mind like a tsunami.

He understood that he was about a second away from a shameful meltdown. There was nothing that he wanted more than to scape this blasted room. He needed to hide far away from those all-seeing emerald eyes... He needed to find somewhere to ride out the approaching storm, without exposing his every flaw to a gleeful witness who would, no doubt, mock him for it in the future.

The thrice-dammed spawn of James Potter was, of course, predictably merciless. The boy cared not for the fact that he was pale. And shaking. And had literally... begged... to be left alone, in the most humiliating show of weakness.

"Do not force me to remind you of the letter of our vow, Professor. You will answer all my questions with the truth, Severus!”

"I don't want to open that thing. I won't!. I didn't ask you for it and I refuse to accept it" His tone could not hide the shudder that raked him from head to toe. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do to veil the total abhorrence that he felt at the mere thought of opening that box and his reaction, as instinctive as it was, rose Potter's hackles.

"There's nothing gruesome inside, you know?. It's something that belongs to you. It has always been yours. I don't see what the bloody problem is, for Merlin's sake!”

"You never do. Do you, Potter?. You've always been blinder than old bats. The worst of it is that knowing it doesn't really inspire you to take care!. You trample over things that you don't really understand, like some kind of bumbling hippogryph, and the fact that your presence is not only damaging, but also unwelcome doesn't seem to bother you in the slightest!"

Verdant pools of grim emotions held his own widened gaze. The boy looked about a breath away from murder: jaw-line rigid and lips pressed into a line that was almost too white. Tanned hands curled into fists. Shoulders tensed as if for battle...

"Of course it bothers me. I don't enjoy seeing you this upset!. I'd love to have the luxury of saying: go on, have some time to yourself. We'll try this again when you are feeling more in control...

But I can't!. I won't!. If I allow you to hide away from me now then I'll never be given the chance to meet the man who lays behind your masks, Severus!"

He swallowed uneasily, if even Potter could tell that he was unraveling then he was in more trouble than he'd realized. He cared not for the conversation they were having, dared not carry on with it in his current frame of mind. He might say something truly unforgivable, something wounding enough to fall right out of the awfully confining cupboard that held the many meanings of the one word that he was slowly learning to despise above all others: respect.

He owed this man his respect. He'd sworn to offer that much on Draco's life...

His gaze fell away from his companion and he took another step backwards, but the action didn't gain him any liberty and his unwanted reward was an even fiercer growl:

"You are not a coward!. You don't walk away from confrontation!. You like to have your say, no matter how awful your words might sound to those around you or how much they hurt their targets. You enjoy hurling them out all the more if you are positively certain that they'll do harm...

Why is this different, Professor?. It's only a box!. A simple, wooden box. Why does it affect you enough to make you run?"

He refused to look at the object in question, although Potter had picked it up and now held it in front of himself, as if in offering.

There was something that felt too much like dread raising within him. Something so akin to suffocating trepidation, that he knew that he'd collapse in the next few seconds unless he found safe shelter...

"I need to leave!. I. Have. To, Potter!. For Salazar's sake... Can't you forget your despicable agenda just this once?. I have nothing left to offer your foul mind for it's sick thrills.

I. AM. A. HUMAN. BEING, POTTER!. And I want... I need... PRIVACY. Right. Now!"

The boy had become rigid like stone. Those brilliant green eyes looked dark and wounded as he simply stood there. His tanned arms flailed around aimlessly with that exquisitely carved box clutched, almost ferociously, between white-knuckled fingers...

Finally he decided to stand up from his chair, every movement was a measured slow motion obviously meant to soothe:

"I am also a human being, Severus. Humans offer one another solace in times of need. Humans attempt to understand one another. It is called COMMUNICATION!. And it does wonders for one's state of mind"

He saw red at the little bastard's acidic dig and squared his thin shoulders into a stiffened stance that clearly spelled out the word confrontation in neon-bright letters.

"Do not mock me, Harry Potter!" He whispered with the kind of deathly tone that had felled fiercer men.

The auror's visage paled and he halted right in the middle of his obvious attempt to circumvent the table in order to forge for himself a more direct access to the spot were Severus was standing.

"I am not mocking you, YOU IDIOT!. I'm trying to help you!. I need to understand what the Hell is going on inside that crazy head of yours, But. You. Are. Not. Letting. Me!"

He was nettled by that reference to his head, the memory of the fiasco that his solo-outing had become was still so fresh that he snarled:

"If you dare trying Legilimency on me again, Potter, I will make sure that you regret it until the very day you die!"

The boy looked fit to explode. His eyes shone with livid fury and his lips were fiercely pursed.

He deposited the blasted box back on the table with a resounding, absolutely enraged thud before taking a couple of sharp footsteps in Severus's direction.

His hands rose to plough through that mop of his when he was no more than three paces away and his tone, when he finally spoke, was a barely restrained whisper:

"What are you doing, Severus?. Why are you behaving like this?. I refuse to be diverted, like a two year old, with a trick as obvious as that one. If you want to talk about the Legilimency we will. I promise you that, but not right now!.

Right now you are having some sort of... nervous break-down. I didn't even know that you could be affected in this way by anything... I want to help you. I need to help you!. You've got to stop seeing me as your enemy and trust me a little, for Merlin's sake!"

That shockingly sincere-sounding rant thundered around the room in the ensuing silence, every word seemed to echo somewhere deep within Severus and he felt... strangely terrified.

His palms began to sweat and his throat dried. His heartbeat pounded against his too-thin wrists like the wild galloping of a thousand stampeding horses. His breathing became labored, too shallow to offer him enough air. He felt dizzy, upset and... utterly unbalanced.

"I... I don't think I can, Potter!. I... There is too much animosity between the two of us"

"That animosity exists only in your head!. I was wrong about the Felix Felicis, I've admitted that already. I've done nothing else to you that could be even considered as harmful. I'm no longer the child you used to teach. I've grown up, Severus!. Won't you at least do me the courtesy of acknowledging that?"

Midnight-black eyes raked over that tautly held body. He remembered the boy so well that he still had trouble relating to the creature before him. He often found himself disoriented by the fact that the child... The child had surpassed the last memory he had of James Potter and now... now he reminded Severus of no one, at least not in the same way that he'd once done...

"Of course I'll admit it!. It'd be beyond daft to deny it, Mr. Potter. You are a teenager no longer. You've finished school. You hold a very prestigious job, indeed. You changed during the time that I have lost. All of you have..."

A snort that was clearly relieved, but also expressive enough to portray all manner of frustrated impatience, exploded from the gryffindor's widened nostrils.

"There!, you've finally admitted it of your own free will. I am an adult now, all right?. I've become a man whom you've never properly met and, therefore, it's not fair of you to judge me as harshly as you are trying to. I admit that I was a bit of a bastard to you when you first came to, but I was under the influence of a potion designed to read YOUR OWN DESIRES, SEVERUS!. You can't blame me, entirely, for that whole fiasco. So... let's move on and agree on the fact that we are strangers to one another, strangers who want to get to know each other better, strangers who might have a lot in common. Strangers who could very easily become incredibly close...

What's in there that could possibly harm you, professor?. It's only a possibility, a door of sorts. You could open it fully, you know?. You could close it completely too, for that matter, only... I'm hoping that you'll give it at least one try before deciding that you are not interested in finding out where it might lead you...

You can be cautious, if you like. I could do slow, I think. Is the idea of trying things out really that unacceptable to you?”

He was shocked by the idiocy of the brat. How dare he give him a lecture such as this one?.

"You forget that you've taken my free will away from me, Potter!. I've been given enough reasons to distrust your every intention. No friendship, of any kind, can ever grow from so inauspicious a beginning"

Potter looked straight at him. Emerald eyes shining with a hardened core that spoke of the same unmovable determination that he'd so often shown when he was younger. This creature, who was ruthlessly trying to stare him down, was the Boy Who Lived. The runt who had destroyed the Dark Lord with nothing but sheer luck and a ridiculously stubborn tenacity.

"Gosh!... That one was harsh, Severus. It truly was. It was also so ironic that I'd feel like laughing, if

it wasn't for the fact that using that particular argument is so hypocritical of you that I could just... hit you, for having the actual balls to say such a thing to me!"

Dark eyes narrowed in outraged disconcertion:

"Potter..." He'd planned to deliver a truly cutting remark. One so incisive that it'd leave the little jerk figuratively bleeding to his death at Severus's own feet. But the boy, as it turned out, was the more livid of the two.

"Allow me to tell you the story of a friendship with roots buried so deeply in “inauspicious beginnings” that it shouldn't have EVER happened!

There was once a man, a very old man. A man locked into a fierce war, with a dark enemy...

And there was boy. A dangerous, clever boy. A boy enslaved to the old man's enemy, through his own misguided choices...”

He lost all color and his breath halted, ebony eyes widened with unutterable horror at the unexpected brutality of that attack.

"Potter!"

The auror's voice rose, instead of coming to a halt, and the man himself approached him determinedly.

Glittering green eyes hardened like steel. Astonishingly cruel words escaping his pursed lips like shots fired at close range with the intention to kill:

"One fine day the boy came to the old man. Begged him for a second chance and the old man... he didn't even think to hesitate, he just... gave it!.

They eventually became closer than father and son. They... they loved each other, Severus!. So much...

It didn't matter that everyone around them thought that the old man had gone crazy. That his judgment was questioned again, and again..., because of that single decision.

He stood by his choice stubbornly. He trusted that boy, against all the odds, until his dying day.

And. He. Was. Proved. Right, in the end..."

Silence.

There were tears: Shamed, horrified tears running down Severus's cheeks.

He felt broken and too shattered to breathe. To speak. To escape...

He stood there: paralyzed beyond reaction by those words and it felt as if Albus's very ghost had abandoned his “Great Adventure” to stand inside this room and judge him harshly...

"I... That was merciless, Potter."

Lily's son shrugged his shoulders. Trembling hands rose towards him, as if to touch him, but ended up fluttering downwards before making contact.

The auror was ashen faced, but quite calm. He remained upright, apparently undaunted by the awful tension that surrounded them like Devil's Snare. He behaved like a man obviously used to withstand the harshest of all fates...

"I am only ever merciless with you, Severus. I wish I didn't have to be, but I don't think you'll accept gentleness from me. At least not yet.."

Those three sentences lodged in his heart like poisoned darts. They sat heavily within him, wounding him with the awareness that the boy... the boy was right, of course.

Albus... Albus would have been so disappointed of him... so grievously crushed by Severus' inability to grant this ridiculous second chance that the gryffindor was, so insistently, demanding to be offered that Severus fancied he could literally hear the old man's despairing sigh.

His head lowered forlornly towards the floor. Long hair fell around his wan features like a protective shield of fluid ebony...

Potter's fingers appeared fleetingly across his field of vision before he felt their rough-tipped touch settle gently over him. The boy set about the task of curling long strands of his dark hair around the pale shell of his left ear with tireless tenderness...

"I am sorry, Severus. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that. I'm sure that there must have been some other way to drive that point across, only... you drive me spare with all that defensiveness. You never just... shut up and accept help gracefully. It has to be pounded into you with a jack hammer!"

He used the excuse presented by the mention of that unrecognizable term to pull himself away from the boy's disconcertingly... loving... touch. His head lifted and he took a step away, frowning with confusion:

"Jack hammer?. What on Earth is a jack hammer?"

If Potter saw through his trick he did not say. He allowed him to step away, all the way to the other

side of the table, without making a single comment.

That tanned hand, now empty of Severus' own hair, lowered very slowly. The green eyes that followed his every move were soft and understanding, utterly gentle:

"Have you lived among wizards for so long that you've forgotten your own roots, Severus Snape?. A Jack hammer is a huge metal machine. Muggles use it to drill rock. I thought the parallel was perfect"

He was too shattered to chuckle at the comment. Although he knew, with disconcerting certainty, that the boy would have followed his cue. Had, maybe, even offered him the opening on purpose.

He suspected that, if he had only attempted to take it, Lily's child would have helped him use that brief flash of humor to step away from the whole situation and find some kind of...respite, only... he lacked the strength to play games of any kind. Not at the moment. Not after having so painful a wound ripped open in such a brutal manner. He felt far too raw.

Albus... Albus remained a grief that he'd never recovered from. A regret never dealt with. A dark poison that threatened to choke him every time he so much as dared to think about that night. About his choice. About the fact that he'd... lifted his wand and killed his beloved mentor in cold blood...

The boy waited at least a minute for his answer and, when he failed to provide it, had to endure the unnerving scrutiny of those thickly-lashed green eyes.

"Come and sit beside me, Severus. You look ready to faint"

He was held by the arm then. Anchored to the moment, to the place by thick, short fingers and he followed their owner back to the table.

Potter fussed over him. Pulled his chair out and helped him sit, as if Severus were some old and frail Grandfather. He fluttered beside him in the ever-growing silence, releasing little jerks of nervous energy in the form of half-formed motions every few seconds.

"Would you like some tea, Professor?. I think something warm might do you good... You look far too pale"

He agreed sharply, more to give the brat something to do than from any true desire to drown his every sorrow within the murky depths of a strong cup of Earl Grey...

Potter seized the small task like a man on a mission. He puttered around, setting the tea with a kind of attention to detail that could only be described as... too fierce.

The drink arrived. And with it, those eyes returned to occupy the space on the opposite side of the table. Thin wisps of curling steam became the only true barrier that separated one deeply worried gaze from its absolutely drained counterpart...

For a long time they both remained thus, silently staring into each other's eyes...

Not a word bridged the seemingly insurmountable chasm that had just opened between them.

Then Potter pushed his ugly mug aside and a strong, determined arm extended towards the edge of the table. Those short fingers closed around the beautiful box with mulish stubbornness and the very air that surrounded them turned heavy with tension.

"Why won't you open it, Severus?"

His focus was forcefully re-directed towards the blasted box and he studied it intently. Dark eyes dulled with defeated misgivings, drawn face ashen...

"What wealth of grace rests here..." He read aloud the legend that had been so lovingly etched onto the cover and a shiver racked his body from head to toe: "Grace... I have never owned such a thing"

Potter's brows furrowed thoughtfully. A frown of concentration drew twin lines just above the masculine promontory that was his nose.

"You are afraid, are you not?. You must have guessed what's inside, unless you are sure it's a trick...

Is that it?. Do you think that I...?. Wait. Wait... What the Hell do you actually think, Severus?.

I need you to go ahead and spit whatever it is out into the open, it's the only way for us to deal with it. I'll help you move forwards, no matter what. I promise."

Severus remained silent for a very long time, his thoughts had become a wild mess of emotions that he did not know how to untangle...

Finally, his voice rent the quiet and he spoke very slowly, almost as if through a thick fog. He'd become a man making a confession that he was not entirely certain he wanted to make, a man making a huge effort...

"It looks so much like the boxes that fill Olivander's shop that..." The flow of his speech faltered. The sorrow-filled awareness of just how empty of his magic he truly felt made him shiver.

His eyes closed and he took a single deep breath.

Potter waited. Green eyes that were wide and brimming with tears stared straight at him as the boy held perfectly still, apparently waiting for him to regain the strength necessary to carry on talking, in a silence that was as scrupulously respectful as it was shocked with anguish...

"My wand is... it's precious to me, Potter. It's the same one that I bought when I was eleven. I've never lost it. Not ever, and it's saved my life so many times already that I...

I do mourn it's absence as if it were my own brother. As if it were a friend who's gone... maybe forever...

I don't even want to imagine that it's here!. Because it can not be. Don't you see?...

This is the exact kind of trick that your father would have pulled on me. The kind that would have had Sirius Black rolling all over the floor with laughter, pointing his finger straight towards my desperately disappointed face as I pulled out some... awful little memento from that thing.

- Did you think it was a wand Sniv?. Your wand?. Why would we give you that?. You are a squib, now, old boy!. Don't you remember?- That's what he would have said, what they all would have said and I... I'm not letting anyone mock me for this. Not even you!"

Potter looked ready to bash him on the head.

"I am not my father, Severus!. Neither am I Sirius. They were all a bunch of prats, by the way, and Albus... what Albus did about this whole thing... what he allowed to take place... it was unforgivable!. All of it: the years of bullying, the thoughtless attack... the whole cover-up!.

I resent that you compare me with them on the flimsy excuse that one of them happened to be my progenitor!"

He flinched on the receiving end of the Gryffindor's incensed indignation:

"It is instinctive, boy!. You look so much like your father that I can't help it but remember every dirty trick that they played on me as soon as I set eyes on you"

Potter's green gaze flashed with the kind of fire that could burn a man alive. Slowly, but utterly scorch him, from the inside out...

"I also look like her, you know?. Like my mother. I have her eyes, at least. That's what I've been told, Severus. By you, among plenty of others. Does that also mean that you feel the instinct to love me for the rest of your life?"

He was so shocked by that unexpected hit that his brain froze. He could think of nothing at all!. Couldn't voice a single word to convey the infuriated wave of betrayed indignation that was rising inside him with enough force to break his formidable control.

To have opened up to the brat, in so painful an issue as his current lack of a wand was to him, only to have his most treasured emotions mocked without reason... He would not tolerate such treatment!.

He stood up suddenly. His high-backed chair fell to the floor with a thunderous thud when he pushed himself away from the table. His black eyes raged with the kind of terrifying ire that used to make seasoned Death Eaters flinch. He knew that he could be truly formidable when driven to this level of ferocious wrath.

"Lily Evans is a subject that's forbidden to you, Potter!. She might have been your mother, boy, but the way I felt, or still feel, about her is my business alone and not a matter of derision. You are NOT welcome to comment on it, or ask questions about it, or poke fun at me because of it!. Is that perfectly clear?"

Potter looked ready to faint. He was pale and still. His eyes shone with the sickened brightness of the truly remorseful.

"I am sorry, Severus!. So very sorry... That last comment was truly unforgivable of me and I... I apologize"

He could sense genuine contrition in the auror's sombre tone. There was something about the boy's posture that stilled Severus's hand right there, preventing him from venting his spleen any further.

He could see, truly see, the dejected droop of those wide shoulders. The sudden greyness that now coated the formerly golden cheeks like some sort of ghastly shroud. He could, literally, touch the absolute misery reeking off Potter like a foul, abhorrent odor.

He could not bring himself to accept that flimsy apology, though. No matter how heartfelt.

But he could not walk away, either...

Not when he knew that doing so would feel like a slap in the face to this contrite and silent child...

Lily's son. Albus' precious Saviour. The boy who had dared to accuse him of failing to offer the same kind of opportunity that he had once availed himself of: a second chance...

That's what all of this was about, wasn't it?. As bizarre as it may sound... that's what Harry Potter wanted from him. He'd been put through all of this ordeal because this forlorn creature had wanted to approach him, but hadn't had a clue about how to manage it. The boy wanted a chance to... what, exactly?... Did he want to become friends, get to the point where Severus didn't mind exchanging little anecdotes about his mother?. Or was this just... another example of the Saviour's unique sense of fair play? Did Potter truly feel the need to save him?... HIM?... A confirmed, unrepentant murderer?.

"Severus?..."

The sound of his given name, being so hesitantly pronounced by the little menace, ripped him away from the bewildered contemplation of his own confusing thoughts and he blinked very slowly. Ebony eyes focused on the frowning expression that had taken over the Gryffindor's features.

"Where were you?. You seemed to be a million miles away"

He did not want to answer that question. So he bent down to retrieve his fallen chair and, by the time he'd sat on it once again, Potter seemed to have caught onto the idea that he did not desire to enlighten him on the matter.

Silence settled then over the room. Both too wary of the explosive situation to risk upsetting each other any further.

But, of course, Potter couldn't leave things well enough alone for any length of time.

Within five minutes the child pushed that blasted box across the table, towards Severus' own hands, and whispered haltingly:

"You've got to trust me. I need you to trust me. Nothing else will ever grow between us, unless you do, Severus!"

He'd have faced a wild dragon with more ease. He did not want to open that box under any circumstances, but he had been challenged to do it. By Potter, no less!.

He'd been shamed into accepting that he owed the boy his chance, at least until he blew it, and if he did... No. No, when he did... then Severus would be finally free to walk away with his head held high.

No one, not even Albus' ghost, would dare blaming him if he decided to cut the obnoxious brat out of his life after Potter inevitably messed up this whole second chance business that he so stubbornly desired to foist over them both.

He took a very deep breath, mind made up to bear with the boy for as long as it took him to give up on the whole ridiculous idea.

"Very well then, Potter. I'll open the bloody thing!"

Long pale fingers grabbed the lovely wooden contraption and brought it closer. The distinctive aroma of the Agarwood rose, like an invisible blessing, to gift his flaring nostrils with the rich sandalwood-like smell .

"Why Agarwood?. Isn't the material a bit... too exquisite for the likes of me?"

Green eyes settled over him with the brightness of a carefully cut emerald. A smile curved the boy's lips and his head shook.

"You were asleep for so long, Severus... When we first tried to bring you out of your healing coma you were unreachable. You didn't want to return. Nothing that we tried worked. NOTHING!.

Agarwood oil was first suggested to us by one of the experts we consulted, an Asian man. I'm actually surprised that you managed to recognize the wood itself. Not many people can, you see?. Are you also familiar with the properties of the oil?”

He frowned in concentration, trying to recall what he'd read about the fluid...

"Oud oil, extracted from the infected bark of the Aquilaria Agallocha... It has been associated with mysticism and divination for centuries. It's supposed to cleanse the body and mind, it heals the spirit... It used to be revered by the ancient practitioners of both, Legilimency and Oclumency, as a tool that enabled them to achieve what they call The Pinnacle"

Potter smiled, his head motioning agreement as he expanded on the information:

"Yes. The Pinnacle is the ultimate goal of all true Legilimens. It is a state of being where the wizard finally abandons his own body and can become his magical essence, instead. It's only a goal, you see?. No one has truly managed to reach it before, although quite a few have died trying...

The point is that we believed that the only way to reach you was through Legilimency, Severus and the oil... the oil was meant to open up the channels of communication that you'd closed. Allow us in, if you will... It didn't work, of course. Even trapped within a coma you are so skilled an occlumens that none of us could breach that mind of yours"

He was riveted to the conversation now, focusing completely on this new information that was being so freely offered to him.

"What happened?. I take it it was Luc who tried to contact me?"

Potter sighed. Index finger rubbing madly at the bridge of his nose.

"Yeah. He is good at it and he knows you inside-out. He is the one who found out about the oil, but you... You did not respond to him or to Draco. Neither were you moved by Minerva, or Kingsley, or the experts from St Mungo's...

Then Albus' portrait came up with a very simple observation: you have always seen Legilimency as an attack. It was obvious to him that you were... defending yourself.

The only way that he could think of, for us to establish contact, was to enter through the one door that you, yourself, had left opened..."

Horrified understanding zeroed in on the only possibility that might actually fit that description and a sudden wave of nausea hit his stomach:

"Oh, no. No, Potter!. Tell me that you didn't... I was dying, for goodness sake!.

I had to give you those dammed memories in a rush!. I didn't have the time to be careful about the method. That was not an invitation to come back into my mind whenever you felt like it”

Soft green eyes stared straight into his own.

"Well, it was the only thing that worked!... If it's any consolation let me tell you that I was terrible at it. I had to learn how to do it from a bunch of very frustrated slytherins and, trust me, trying to learn Legilimency from you was a piece of cake, compared to learning it from a frighteningly impatient Lucius Malfoy!"

He was stricken with the most awful sense of having being violated that he'd ever felt, in the whole of his life...

"You... you've seen all of my memories?"

Potter's voice grew firmer. Fervent. Those green eyes acquired the absolute harshness of true conviction:

"It was necessary, Severus!"

He felt faint with mortified embarrassment. Exposed, to his very soul, before this man who'd seen... EVERYTHING: His every mistake. His every failure... His every heartbreak. His every lost hope...

He understood then, without a shadow of doubt, just how much he'd changed in the boy's eyes. Potter was Gryffindor enough to have felt pity for his pathetic Slytherin Professor.

The kind of sorrow that can easily break a man in two rose within him then. He became distressed with the idea that he was... no longer able to demand respect from the child before him, not now that Potter knew... HIM!.

"Severus?"

Black eyes shied away from the auror's own and his pale face turned rigid. He was not a closed off entity any longer. He was shame and he was anger. He was despondent, grief-stricken humanity. He was wide open... WIDE. OPEN!...

With a sudden, almost furious flick of his index finger he pulled the lid off the box and looked inside, truly unsurprised now to find it there:

Eleven and a half inches of unpolished Silver Birch with a core that held the heart-string of a stillborn unicorn...

A wand that spoke of potential and purity. At least that's what Ollivander had claimed, on that distant morning, to the wide-eyed eleven year old he'd been so long ago...

Potential. And purity...

How could this wand have possibly chosen him?. The longer he thought on it, the least that he understood it. There was never a man as far removed from both as he'd turned out to be...

He shot up to his feet and stumbled hastily backwards.

He could not cope with the presence of the wand beside him, in the room. Resting, so innocently, within that protective casing meant to keep it's power clean. Pure...

He'd committed atrocities with that thing!. So many atrocities...

He'd brewed poisons with it. Designed both lethal and disfiguring curses. He'd tortured others brutally. He'd sworn himself over to a monster. He'd allowed children, who'd been under his care at the time, to come to harm. He'd murdered so many people in cold blood... He'd killed Albus...

"Severus?"

Potter sounded bewildered. He'd also shot to his feet and was trying to reach him, arm extended forwards, ready to hold him...

"Severus! What are you doing? Where are you going?"

He'd turned around wildly and was trying to abandon the room, as if the very hounds of Hell were hot on his heels. Potter followed close behind, attempting to bring him to a halt.

The door to the flat loomed ahead, luring him with the promise of freedom. With the certainty that he could find... oblivion... if he were to lose himself within a crowd of strangers. Muggle strangers at that, people who had never heard of magic and could, therefore, never judge him for his crimes against it...

"Severus!"

The boy's hand finally closed around his arm, just as his own had curled around the doorknob. He was brought to an unwanted stop then. Held, inside this house, against his will.

"Let go, Potter. I need to leave!"

Emerald eyes turned mulish. Thin lips compressed into a thin, displeased line that only opened to growl an absolutely incensed denial:

"No way!. You've got to stay here and deal with this like a sane, well rounded person. Things do not disappear, just because you walk away from them!"

He turned on the child, ebony-black eyes alive with utter purpose:

"Trust, Mr. Potter, is a privilege that goes both ways!.

I trusted you, when you demanded that I open that box. And now you'll have to trust that I can deal better with my own emotions when there is no outside interference. I shall return when I feel ready. You've already been unwelcome witness to enough of my wretched life. Allow me to have some privacy, for once. I have the right, you know? I. Have. The. Right!"

The Gryffindor's hand clutched his arm almost fiercely in a brief clench of wide, tanned fingers that was over in a blink. Concerned verdant eyes turned darker with misgivings as the boy released him slowly.

A brief silence filled the hallway as they both stood there, uncertain and hurting. Poised at the very edge of change...

Then the child's mouth opened and he whispered softly:

"Very well, Severus. Do what you must."

He turned the doorknob and escaped into the all-encompassing beige corridor without even bothering to utter a response.

Potter remained perfectly still beside the door. A paralyzed, pale-faced figure whose eyes followed him every step of the way.

That gaze didn't leave him at all while he waited for the lift. It never abandoned him until the polished metal doors finally closed between them, interposing a physical barrier between himself and those wounded green eyes...

The lift-cage plummeted down, towards the ground floor, leaving the boy behind. Taking Severus away from it all at top speed, granting him the chance to reach out towards freedom and distance. Towards anonymity. Towards relief... Towards all the things that he could only find away from Harry Potter. Far, far away!...

TBC...

Ch16

Ch18