The voice under all silences. Chapter 22

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 22 

After that kiss life became truly difficult.

He'd remember the whole thing at the most strange of times: while sipping his tea. While brushing his teeth. While sitting, alone, in his bed. While attempting, so hard, not to stare dumbly at Potter...

He felt... dazed and horrified in equal measure. He felt... robbed of a part of himself that had always been his own, a part of himself that had now been... invaded, besmirched. Utterly tainted by another's touch, another's presence...

The very worst of it all was that the other side of the equation refused to leave him alone. As the memory of the boy's unbelievingly stupid action refused to be pushed inside a box labeled “disaster“ and remain there, untouched and utterly unremarked upon for all eternity, his mood fluctuated between abject despair and absolute, livid ire.

He understood that, for some bizarre reason known only to him, Potter had decided that pecking one's hysterical former professor smack on the lips was a better way to bring him out of a panic-attack than to simply... slap the Hell out of him until sense returned to his mind.

He understood that Potter had been trying to help him, in his own inimitable way, of course, but... he could not accept the idea that it had actually happened. Could not... conform... himself to it. Not in any shape or form.

He wanted desperately to forget the whole shameful... debacle. But the incident seemed to be disconcertingly lodged in his mind with a firmness that just... drove him to distraction!. His desperately depraved consciousness seemed determined to revisit those few seconds AD-NAUSEUM!. So much so, that his every attempt to forget the whole blasted ordeal simply... backfired.

There was so much tension between them now that even their former animosity would have been preferable to the awfully polite dancing around one another that had marked their most recent interactions. He was honest enough to recognize that the situation was mostly his fault, but... he could not bring himself to face the boy now. Not at all. Not for any reason...

He started to use every excuse that he could think of to abandon the awful tension-filled flat.

Long walks became an almost visceral obsession and he spent so many hours sequestered within the comfortable coziness of Mr. Crowley's bookshop that the old man started to prepare two cups of tea, instead of one. Minutely adjusting his own morning routine in expectation of Severus' own arrival.

He found the soothing atmosphere of the small shop calming, it appeased his agitated senses and allowed him the respite of concentrating on something that he loved.

The printed word allowed him to escape into worlds where he could live life through the reassuring distance of a firmly dividing glass. He didn't have to feel anything. He didn't have to deal with the confusing mix of... shamed sentiment and paralyzing terror that he associated with real-life interactions...

The more often he disappeared, though, the fouler Potter's mood became.

More than once the auror had attempted to strike up a conversation regarding the topic of his outings, but he was never encouraged in his questions. Never truly offered an answer. Never allowed to return to their former, and dearly-missed, closeness.

There had been no more... cooking together. No more watching films together at the end of their day. No more walks through the park. No more dinners outside. No more popcorn...

Severus would sit stiffly in his chair and remain stoically silent as the boy insisted on going through the motions of preparing his breakfast every morning. The same ghastly scene would replay day after day: Potter huffed, shook his awfully messy head and stammered awkwardly while Severus watched and despaired for their irreparably damaged friendship in a frosty, unwelcoming silence that he didn't know how to break.

Finally the boy would ask him what his plans were, in a slightly indignant tone, and he'd try to force himself to... unbend... at least a little. But he could never manage to do such a thing in the end.

He was too ashamed of himself, too... unsure of the proper protocol of conduct to be followed in situations such as this one. How do you look the man who's kissed you out of pity in the eye?. How do you attempt to remain friends with the one person in all the world who's ever bothered to... touch you in a sexual kind of way?.

He had no clue as to what the answers to these questions might be. Had no idea as to whom should he ask for some kind of... insight, or even if he wanted to talk to anyone about any of it!. He didn't want to have to deal with any such thing and he knew that Potter... Potter would eventually force him to do exactly that. The mere thought of it was enough to make him break out into a cold sweat and he'd freeze, like a deer caught in the lights of sudden Lumos, before retreating hastily. Frostily. Cowardly...

"I'm going out" He'd inform the child invariably and it was obvious that the answer bothered Potter beyond reason. The youth would grit his teeth and proceed to bang his coffee-making machine around the worktop, like a monkey trapped inside a cage. Green eyes afire with absolutely murderous anger. Jawline so rigid that Severus wondered how it was possible that he hadn't chipped off a tooth already.

After a while Potter's response started to change. He took a very deep breath and dared to suggest that they go out together. As if they could!. As if nothing, absolutely nothing untoward had happened between them. As if it were possible for the two of them to... ignore altogether the fact that they had kissed and return to their strained friendship once again.

The gryffindor had come up with the most bizarre schemes to Severus' unchanged, three-word statement and so it was that he started being subjected to a very obviously faked surprised intake of breath, quickly followed by one astonishingly idiotic suggestion after another:

"Really?. I've got to go do some shopping, maybe we should go together?. We are running out of lettuce, Severus”

In the space of three days the boy had needed to go shopping. To the bank. To the book-shop, the post office... and last, but utterly bizarrely, to the dentist!...

Every increasingly weirder invitation to join Potter in all of that... strange fun that the boy was so insistently demanding that they share was frostily rejected, and the more that situation went on, the more tension that accumulated between the two of them.

It felt, to Severus' own senses, as if they were suspended together over a slowly building fire: rotating endlessly around it, like boars tied to a grilling pole. Helplessly becoming more and more scorched by the merciless power of those increasingly dangerous flames, until there was no doubt in his mind that the situation could not possibly continue for much longer. One or the other would have to break soon, before they both burned to a crisp together...

Every evening he'd return to his beige prison fearing that this would be the night when the situation finally came to a head.

The child always waited for him, always!. He'd be perched under the archway that lead straight into the main living-room, as if afraid that he'd miss Severus' return if he so much as got comfortable in one room or another. Those green eyes drilled into his own, flashing with a kind of betrayed hurt that was never voiced and that young and stubborn jawline ended up invariably locked into a fairly expressive rendition of vexed affront.

Although he'd been waiting for it to happen, there had been no attempt to attack him via Legilimency. No more scenes of ridiculously overprotective idiocy. No word spoken, aloud at least, to imply that he was incapable of looking after himself.

Potter seemed now convinced that he was safe enough navigating the muggle world all by himself. But that didn't stop the boy waiting every night for his return, no matter how late Severus arrived or how many times he told the auror, in a frosty and strained voice, that there was no reason to worry that he'd vanish!.

He had sworn, on Draco's life no less, to remain under the auror's roof no matter what else happened. In all honesty, he'd been expecting the boy to take his rather obvious cue and release him from the constrains of their vow... but Potter, blind as he was to the delicate nuances of true subtlety, had failed to do so...

As one day merged slowly into the next and the boy's attempts to engage him became less and less subtle he grew weary of going back. He started to stretch the return journey to the point where he almost crawled through the streets.

Luc had come bearing gifts, in the shape of his own money already handily converted to muggle currency and more clothes, too... The robes had been magically adapted to his new, emaciated figure, so that they no longer fell off him in swathe upon swathe of heavy black wool.

They also had been magically treated with some charm that allowed the muggles to see nothing out of the ordinary about them. Apparently it showed him to be wearing a very elegant business suit of some kind, the same brand that Luc himself liked to wear whenever he was forced to attend to the muggle side of his vast financial empire...

Due to the quality of the clothing that he was supposedly wearing, he found himself being warmly welcomed into any establishment that he chose to enter. If he decided to idle the whole afternoon away at a coffee shop, ordering cup of tea after cup of tea, the waiters simply nodded with a smile and left him mostly alone. This was how he spent entire days now. To the point that he became a connoisseur of every coffee house or tea-room to be had within a five mile radius of the flat.

One Thursday evening, almost two whole weeks since that blasted kiss, he returned to his cage later than ever. He'd spoken to Luc earlier in the day and had been slyly informed that he was expected to be returning to the school by next Friday, no matter how many Howlers Potter decided to send threatening to sue the lot of them.

He was smiling with relief. Thinking about the fact that, if Lucius remained firm... then he'd have seriously valid reasons to absent himself from the flat daily. He needed to survive the coming week first, though...

Then they'd be forced to find some sort of solution that would allow him to resume his duties as Headmaster without upsetting the letter of the vow that he'd been so very cleverly tricked into swearing.

He used his key and entered the flat, frowning slightly when it became immediately apparent that Potter was not lurking under the archway.

He stilled for a second, wondering if it was possible that the boy had finally given up on him and left...

His heart clenched at the prospect and a truly unexpected amount of... grief... made him feel breathless with wounded betrayal. He could not believe how... hurt... he felt by the mere idea of it. How was it possible for Potter's regard to have become so important to him in so brief a span of time?...

Voices floated towards him then. Loud, agitated voices and he was pathetically relieved to realize that he'd been wrong. Potter hadn't abandoned him yet, there were visitors in the house. Angry, frustrated visitors that seemed to be screaming at the auror.

He frowned. Unsettled once again by how strongly he desired to go in there and defend the gryffindor from whoever it was that had decided to come into the man's own home and... abuse him.

A few steps down the corridor brought him close enough to finally distinguish what was being said.

He recognized Draco's voice almost immediately and was instinctively troubled by the fact they were together. He froze from head to toe, wondering if he should rush in and attempt to save his precious godchild from saying something truly awful to his stranded... friend.

"I don't want to get into that discussion with you, if you've got a problem with something that my father's done, then you must address it with him. I've come to see my Godfather. I can't believe that he is not here!. What have you done to him, Potter?.

How is it possible that I haven't managed to find him at home all week?. I want to know what you've done to upset him this much, he shouldn't be running around town so soon after leaving St Mungo's. This can't be good for him, Harry!”

“I told you this already!. I've told your bloody father, too. And your mother. And Minerva... Gosh!. You guys have got to give me a break. OK?...

He's been running all around the city since he found out that he's still the Headmaster of Hogwarts. He didn't take the news too well, Draco. I hadn't realized that he didn't know anything about it and I kind of dropped the news on him without much warning”

"That's not reason enough, Potter!. Severus is the most rational man I know, he wouldn't put his own health in jeopardy for something as ridiculous as that. Not to this level of... irresponsibility.

He is still physically weak. He has no magic. He is still taking potions round the clock...

Are you really trying to convince me that the man who berated me constantly while I was growing up, for playing Quidditch with a headache, has decided to abandon the habits of a lifetime and become some kind of... reckless wanderer for no good reason whatsoever?. How stupid do you think I am?”

Listening to the ever-increasing animosity being displayed in there Severus wondered if he should go inside and separate them, send each one to a different corner of Potter's lounge before they came to blows on his behalf...

He'd already taken a couple of steps forwards when the gryffindor's response reached his ears and he decided to wait things out, at least for the moment. Leave the two of them to their discussion and see how far they'll take it.

Maybe, he'd even learn something that could finally explain the astonishingly civil relationship that seemed to have developed between the two...

"He became hysterical when I told him about Hogwarts, all right?. I had to force him out of it. Severus' reaction to that was a tad... extreme.

You know the man, Draco!. He got mad and hasn't bothered to speak to me ever since. He's decided that running away is the way to deal with it and I just... I don't know what to do!. I can't seem to reach him, he's closed off completely!”

"You slapped him?" Draco's growl was clearly incensed. His tone had turned into a frosty hiss of fury from one syllable to the next. "How could you do such a thing, Harry?. No matter how upset he was he'd have eventually brought himself under control. There was no need for you to... intervene. If you dared to slap him, then it's a bloody miracle that he let you live... There's no one more proud than my Godfather. He's never going to forgive you for this. Never!. I can't believe you were that stupid!”

"I'm willing to apologize, for Godric's sake!. I've been wanting to have this out with him since it happened, but he is impossible to pin down!.

I let things slide for a few days. Tried to wait him out and see if he'd settle, but...

He's been coming home later and later every night. He's spending every hour of the day going from shop to shop, drinking tea...

He hardly eats any dinner, whenever he makes it back here on time and he hasn't bothered to snarl five words at me in more than a week!. I'm going right out of my mind with worry for that man and he just... DOESN'T SEEM TO CARE!.

I've tried to make him see sense, but he wouldn't even listen!. He's refusing to go to you or your father. He's shot me down every time I've tried to suggest that it'd be better if I accompany him on his outings. I didn't know what he was doing, so I... I started to follow him...”

There was a short silence that Severus couldn't really interpret. Lacking any access to the youths meant that he could not gauge their reactions to each other by the expression on their faces, but he could imagine without much effort how his godchild's expressive gray eyes would be shooting lethally poisonous daggers at the gryffindor right about now.

He felt like going in there and wringing the brat's neck himself. He could not believe the audacity of the bastard!. How dare he spy on Severus' own activities, as if he had any right?. The mere idea was enough to make his jaw grit and his hands curl into a pair of incensed white-knuckled fists.

"You've followed him?. After he's made it perfectly clear... for days... that he doesn't want to see you? Are you daft, Potter?.

When a sick but proud man, such as Severus, abandons all safety in order to avoid you... for hours on end, no less, you don't go riling him up!.

He needs some time. He needs some space to deal with the present as it is. Have you forgotten that he used to hate you viscerally?. He's just returned from a coma, the war has barely ended in his mind!. We are still school children to him. His last memories of us have us both at seventeen, for Merlin's sake!”

"I know that!. I. KNOW. THAT, Draco!..." Potter's shout carried so much frustration, so much despairing anger, that the emotion seemed to take form and breathe itself into sudden, pain-filled life in the small and stunned silence that followed.

"Then you are even more of an idiot than I thought you were!" Draco's assessment was as coldly voiced as it was merciless. "You are pushing him too much, too fast, too strongly... You've got to let him breathe a bit!. Can't you understand that he'll only resent you, if you continue trying to force him to see you in a new light before he is ready?...

You don't know how fragile he can be, Harry!. I've never seen him so low before, He is Breaking. Apart. At. The. Seams...

Don't you see that you've taken over at the worst possible time?. He is confused and afraid and he needs to feel safe, only... he can't, because you've gone ahead and removed his every clutch out of the equation...

He doesn't trust you, so he is on his guard every second of every day instead of relaxing. How is that going to allow him to heal properly?.

He needs me. And my father. And Mcgonagal. He needs to come home, you've got to see that...”

"He is not ready!. His magic hasn't returned. There's no way that he can be safe at Hogwarts, not until he can properly defend himself from everything that can go wrong. I told that to your father.

I'm not keeping him a prisoner, for Godric's sake!. You can visit him whenever you like, it's not as if I could stop any of you, even if I wanted to.

I need you to tell Lucius to back off, this thing that he's convinced the Board to do can really harm Severus!. He should be allowed time to recover, there's no need to force his return quite this soon. Not when Minerva is ready to cover for as long as it takes...”

There was some sort of cutlery being banged around, almost as if they both were attempting to go through the motions of polite beverage-sharing. A spoon clinked rather forcefully against thick porcelain and then Draco's voice returned to the fray, colder than ever...

"I won't help you persuade Father to halt Severus' return. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that you two need to part ways. Right now, Potter!.

My Godfather needs the familiarity that the castle can provide him with. He needs the comfort of having all of us at hand. He needs the reassurance of seeing with his own eyes the changes that have happened in his absence. He needs some distance from whatever the Hell it is that has been happening here...”

“And if he gets hurt again?. What do we do then, Draco?. Who do we blame?... Do we keep visiting him at the hospital, every two weeks, just because we are all so busy tugging on him, like sort of human trophy, that we can't look out for his best interests?“

"You are a fine one to talk!. He broke his arm and lost his magic... because of you!. Don't go climbing on your gryffindor high horse now. Not in front of me, at least!. There'll be someone always with him there. We were talking the logistics of it, just last Monday.

A special meeting of the board was held after you sent along that ridiculously lengthy list of yours. Father is trying to accommodate your demands for his safety to the best of our abilities, Harry. But you must remember that you have no actual grounds for requesting any of them.

Severus is nothing of yours. Nothing!. He is mine if he is anyone's. I am his godson. I worry as much as you do about him, probably more... and I'm telling you that trying to tangle Father in a legal tug-of-war over Severus' return won't help anyone!”

"Why is Lucius so adamant about this?. I can't get it into his head that he is making a mistake. It'll be a disaster, Draco!. Why can't any of you see that?. Give me a reason for this, one single reason that actually makes sense...”

The legs of a chair scrapped across the floor as one boy or the other stood up impatiently. The jarring sound of agitated footsteps filled the small, tense silence and when his godson's answer finally reached his ears it sounded like a shockingly ferocious growl of vexed impatience:

"I've been doing that very thing for the last half hour, Potter!. But you are too thick to listen to someone who is trying to help you. Just because I'm telling you something that you don't want to hear doesn't mean you get to dismiss what I'm saying!.

Severus needs familiar people and places. He needs privacy. He needs time. He needs a respite from you, before you end up suffocating him to death... Do you think you'll get it now or should I be even more blunt?”

A shocked kind of vacuum followed. There was no noise of any kind. No sound at all. Cutlery, footsteps and even breathing seemed to have come to a sudden halt on the other side of the wall.

"What would you do if you were me, Malfoy?. If you knew without a shadow of doubt that you are trying too hard, but felt too insecure to relax?. How would you feel if you worried yourself sick about the health of a man who just... can't see how weak he truly is?. Who doesn't eat enough, doesn't sleep enough, doesn't trust you enough to... lean on you?”

"I'd be heartbroken, Harry... But I'll also understand that I need to retreat and think about all of it again, maybe change my whole strategy...

I'm not telling you to give him up. I'm only telling you to remember who you are dealing with here. You've got to thread far more carefully than this because you are hurting my Godfather and you are not even realizing it. You can't deal with Severus like a gryffindor. He is a slytherin, for Merlin's sake!. He needs... patience, subtlety, understanding...

He won't respond well to your let's-bash-every-problem-into-submission kind of approach. He'll want to ruminate things over. Turn them around in his head. Analyze them, in peace, before he is even ready to move on..."

"So you think I should let him go?”

Draco's response must have been non-verbal, but strong enough to convey the same kind of firmness of his earlier words, because there was a disconcerting little noise that sounded uncannily close to a loud sniffle. Then the auror's chocked voice rent the air once again:

"What if he goes back to hate my guts?. What if I send him back to Hogwarts only to find out that he's planning to barricade himself in there until all... this... goes away?.

He'll be home, Draco. He'll have no reason to deal with me if he doesn't want to... and we both know just how stubborn that bloody man can be!”

"Then you keep trying, Harry. That's the only thing you can do. It's the only think that'll work in the end, too. He won't be able to barricade himself, as you so charmingly put it, unless you allow him to do so.

You need to give him space, not give up on him altogether. Things were going well between you two, weren't they?. They'll return there eventually, but you've got to be patient, for Salazar's sake!.

He'll have to test you before he can trust you, you know that!. But it'll have to be on his terms. In his own time. You'll get nothing but resentment if you rush this. Worse than that: you might actually lose him and If you do, he'll be out of your reach forever...“ 

TBC...

 

Ch21

Ch23