The voice under all silences. Chapter 27

[pekeleke]

A/N: This work was recently nominated for an Energize W.I.P. Award in the category "Most promising Harry Potter Fan Fiction". Although this story didn't win any actual prize I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you, who are reading, reviewing and obviously finding this story worthy of receiving that kind of attention. Every second that you spend reading a work of mine is a precious gift that you all give me. It was a true honor to receive that notification, and it only ever happened because of you all.

To those of you who read but don't review. To those of you who do review but do so anonymously, making it impossible for me to acknowledge your lovely comments directly, and let's not forget those of you who have already received some sort of answer from me about your thoughts on this story: I want to take this opportunity to thank you all, for everything.

 

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 27

He knew not how to start this conversation.

He was so truly embarrassed that his cheeks felt like a furnace and his fingers were curled around the teacup that Luc had given him with all the rigidity of a crab's claw.

His friend was frowning at him. Pale gray eyes darkened with a worry that their owner was not even bothering to mask as the silence grew and grew. It pulsed with tension. With expectation. With the kind of... watchful energy... that only Luc himself could ever bring to such encounters.

Lucius Malfoy was the perfect interrogator: he was elegant and cold. He was patient. Curious. Clever... He had the kind of subtlety that always triumphed in the end, no matter how reluctant his victim. He always got his answer. Always!. And he was never particularly bothered by how long it might take him, either.

Luc lived to find answers to his questions. To any questions. But, most particularly, to those that either intrigued him at an intellectual level or were related to someone that he cared deeply for...

"You must stop... dithering... Severus. Either the tea is to your satisfaction or it is not. Holding the cup tightly enough to break my precious china for the grand total of three hours, without actually bothering to take a single sip, is just... rude!. It's too much indecision for so small a choice. Either drink it or leave it, please. Then we can talk."

He blinked at his friend dejectedly and his hand deposited the cup onto a side table before returning slowly to his own lap, where it laid, like a limp, snow-colored ribbon, against the unrelenting darkness of his woolen black robe.

He knew that he was trembling from head to toe. He felt cold to his very bones. He was on the edge of a meltdown and he needed advice, sensible advice... He needed it desperately.

"Draco fire-called yesterday evening, Severus. He said that you had apparated yourself to Hogwarts. Does this have something to do with that, my friend?. Have you recovered your magic?"

He blinked dazedly in Luc's general direction. Heavy head processing the other man's words slowly. So very slowly... Too slowly.

"Severus?"

He heard the increasingly concerned note contained in Luc's sharp address, but couldn't find within his muddled thoughts the necessary words to express how much he needed his friend's... help.

He'd hardly slept at all and, when he'd finally managed to nod off, it was to have horrific nightmares of Lily. He'd dreamed that James Potter, together with the whole pack of marauders, had come back from the grave to hunt him down. They had demanded, at the top of their inferius-like voices, that he leave Potter's boy alone. Stop corrupting their precious child's mind, desist from ruining his whole life...

He'd woken covered in sweat. Heart pounding a mile a minute within the shrunken prison of his ribcage. He'd started to tremble then and had been forced to sit up hastily on the bed by a sense of impending doom that would just... not leave him alone.

No matter how hard he tried to tell himself to ignore that ridiculous nightmare he hadn't managed to calm himself since...

He'd paced the auror's rooms like a caged bear until he'd finally spotted the floo powder. The decision that had finally brought him to the Manor had been instinctive, desperate. He knew that Lucius could, and would, help him. He knew that he wasn't the best judge of situations such as this one. Not really. He was woefully ill-prepared to understand what his own emotions meant under normal circumstances... There was no way on Earth that he could successfully try to understand the boy's.

"Severus, I want you to look me straight in the eye and tell me the first word that comes into your head"

He startled at the barked order. Ebony colored eyelashes fluttered wildly: unveiling and concealing their owner's distressed gaze in a painfully rhythmic pattern.

He swallowed the awfully tight knot of sheer tension that had lodged in his throat since that last surreal... conversation... with Potter and his pale lips parted in a gasp that, literally, exhaled confusion.

"Potter..."

Luc went rigid in his chair.

"He's done something to you?. He dared to... punish you... for my refusal to let him get away with that disgusting little trick of his?. Is that why your magic reacted by apparating you to the school? What has he done to you, Severus?"

Hearing his childhood friend's enraged rant focused him somewhat and he was able to close his eyes for a few seconds. Attempting, in vain, to regain some form of self-control.

He understood that he was frightening Luc. He was actually frightening himself. He was never this inarticulate. Had never before flown head first into the manor, at the crack of dawn, no less, in search of what amounted to nothing short of... comfort.

"Severus... You must answer me. Right now!"

He was so ashamed of his own thoughtless behavior that he actually flinched at Luc's dark tone. The aristocratic slytherin sighed before coming to a stand in order to cross the small distance that separated their two chairs. After a brief second of hesitation Luc knelt gingerly beside him, richly ringed fingers came to rest soothingly over the ice-cold hand that was curled on Severus' lap.

"If he has caused you harm I'll kill him, my friend!. No one shall ever find the body. That I promise you, Severus"

"He... He... I don't even know if I'll be allowed to say this to you..."

Pale gray eyes narrowed intently on his ashen face. Rosy lips thinned with displeasure while soft, elegant hands cradled his own gently.

"Is this about the oath?"

His dark head shook in negation. Potion-tainted fingertips curled into Luc's own hand and held on tightly.

"It is about the boy, though"

Luc swallowed too thickly for the look of nonchalance that he was trying to portray and he could tell, without any effort at all, that his friend was desperately worried.

"I believe that oath of yours won't be able to... punish... you severely. Not unless you try to break it. Potter never meant to hurt you with it, did he?. You'd be dead if he had...

You fought the vow itself when it was trying to take hold, didn't you, Severus?. It's the only explanation I could find that fits into what happened. You fought the magic and either he, himself, or Hogwarts must have tried to intervene on your behalf. You wouldn't be here, otherwise...

Whichever the case, the magic responded to his intentions, so they must have been friendly.

I think you'll find that you can talk to me about the both of you, as long as what you say is not directly linked to the letter of the vow”

He swallowed with nerves and promptly choked on his own saliva. He started to cough almost convulsively, utterly unable to shield himself under the protective mantle of his shattered dignity. He felt ready to die with the humiliation of this. He could not bear to look into Luc's eyes as his trembling lips finally managed the task of bringing to wavering life the bizarre words that had been circling his mind for hours.

"He said... he said he wants to marry... me!"

The silence that followed his stark statement seemed to be plagued with the most disconcerting kind of... volatile... energy.

He'd expected Luc to laugh so much and so harshly that he'd be returned to his senses with abrupt and brutal firmness. He wanted to have the reassuring opinion of just how utterly ridiculous the whole concept truly was hammered down on him, by the one man who wouldn't, ever, allow him to suffer the indignity of believing such lies... Not now. Not ever. And definitely not again...

He could not afford to be convinced of the fact that he'd managed to snare the... romantic... regard of someone. Anyone. But specially not of Harry Potter...

"He said... WHAT?" Luc's voice was absolutely appalled with astonishment and Severus felt as if some merciless bastard had plunged him inside a grinder and mashed him into a pulp, upon hearing that bewildered request for clarification. He could not possibly repeat it. He could not bear to... look down into his friend's eyes and see them gazing up at him with... pity.

"You heard me!" He growled. He was beyond vexed with himself, with Luc and with Harry-Bloody-Potter for putting him through this whole ghastly ordeal, in the first place.

Luc squeezed his hand so harshly that he gasped and tried to pull his digits away, but he was held too firmly...

His bony wrist was encircled when he failed to look down. Then it was shaken with frustration, until he had no other option but to confront Luc's gray gaze.

"Stop that, for Merlin's sake!. I'm not your bloody rag-doll, Malfoy"

His friend ignored him altogether. Beautiful, aristocratic features were contracted into an expression of deep puzzlement, surprised frustration and vexed exasperation.

"When did this happen, Severus?. How did it happen?. I can't believe he told you that!"

"There's no need for you to believe any of it, anyway. He was obviously lying"

A golden eyebrow shot upwards, in that incredibly irritating, elegant little arch that all Malfoys are born knowing how to produce.

"Was he?"

"Of course he was!. He must have been!. The whole claim is just... too stupid to be believable!"

He could tell almost immediately that he'd managed to enrage Luc. Those richly ringed fingers abandoned his thin wrist and his friend rose in a jerky and exasperated motion that simply lacked the smooth grace with which the aristocratic slytherin usually moved.

There was a second of silence as the owner of the manor resumed his seat. Then those smoke colored eyes proceeded to drill into him with a kind of heartbroken sadness that brought a lump the size of Hogwarts to his achingly dry throat.

"Why?. Why is it stupid?. What, exactly, did that bloody idiot say?"

Severus swallowed with difficulty. Ebony eyes lowered towards the floor in order to avoid eye-contact with his companion.

He had come here to have this conversation, for Merlin's sake. It didn't matter in the slightest that he really had no desire to... endure it any further. He had to. He needed to hear Luc's opinion on this matter. He needed to listen to the perspective of someone who had been awake every second of these last four years... Someone he trusted implicitly. Someone who'd steer him straight into safety without a second of doubt...

He needed to decide how he was going to respond to the boy when he finally showed up at the castle. Because Potter would show. Today, most probably... In fact he wouldn't be too surprised to find out that the bloody child was up in Scotland right now, searching those chambers of his for Severus' own presence.

"He... implied... that he loves me" The sentence escaped his reluctant, parched lips more like a wavering stutter than a firmly-voiced statement, but he couldn't do better at that moment. Not while he felt this exposed. This uncomfortable. This... terrified of the bizarre situation that he was being, so mercilessly, forced to live through.

Luc's surprised intake of breath was sharp and audible. It was shocked and frustrated all in one. It was utterly irritated.

"Forgive me if I sound too blunt for you, but I can't bring myself to agree with your opinion on this matter. The fact that someone has finally showed enough good taste to actually love you is not stupid in any shape or form, Severus. I find it really offensive that you'd dare to imply otherwise!"

He was so disconcerted at finding himself on the wrong side of that furiously barked remonstration that he jumped. Widened ebony eyes fixed with wounded surprise upon his friend's pale and exquisite visage.

"Excuse me?. I think I must have heard you wrong."

Luc's lips thinned even further and he tapped a pointedly irritated index finger against the armrest of his chair.

"You've heard me just fine, my friend. I had it with all this I'm-too-ugly-for-love nonsense that you like to throw around. It's absolute troll-shit and I won't listen to it for a single second longer!"

He gaped like a beached whale. He could do nothing but stare straight into those incensed gray eyes and... blink stupidly.

His mind felt numb with paralyzed shock and his tongue refused to shape a single word. He was rendered immobile, speechless and utterly dumb by the sheer unexpectedness of the other man's rant...

Silence reigned supreme in the room for a long time. Both men gazed warily at each other as the strained seconds morphed into agonizingly tense minutes until, finally, it was Luc who broke the impasse.

"You need a drink, Severus. Trust me on this... I wish you'd let me pour a good dose of my best brandy down your throat. It'll do you much more good than a hundred cups of tea, but... we both know your limitations. Don't we, my friend?.

You'll have tea and you'll calm down. Only then shall we attempt to have this conversation again, using far more patience than I've shown you this far... That you definitely deserve and I shall strive to give it to you."

A snap of pale fingers brought a house elf to them and the order for the drinks was placed with a sharp, determined bark.

They sat facing one another in the wretched silence, staring into each other's eyes with unblinking focus. Severus felt deeply uncomfortable. Shortchanged by the fact that his friend, his loyal friend, had so inexplicably decided to turn against him when he needed him the most. He wondered what would happen now. How could he move past this awful need to be cautious around his host that he was beginning to experience, in order to... confide in the man.

"You are over-thinking this. You know that, don't you, Severus?. Just because I don't agree with you when you tell me that you are hideous, doesn't mean that you can't trust me"

His face flamed with the horror of being so plainly transparent to those shrewd gray eyes.

"I thought we were waiting for the tea" He stalled for time, utterly discomfited with the topic.

Luc dared to shrug his wide, elegantly clad shoulders.

"Some things have to be nipped in the bud, my friend. Your doubts tend to be one of them. You do like to... entrench... yourself. It's a very unhelpful habit."

He was ruffled by the unwarranted criticism.

"So now I'm not only astonishingly beautiful to look at, but also quite unhelpful. I hope you are not expecting gratefulness from me for your kind words"

"Oh, For Merlin's sake!. I did not call you astonishingly beautiful. Nor did I imply that you are useless in any way, shape, or form. I would have been lying if I had and I. Do. Not. Lie. To. You, Severus!"

He felt so raw that he couldn't help the harshness of his tone:

"Then what the Hell are you doing, Lucius?. This doesn't feel like the truth!. It doesn't sound like the truth!. It doesn't match my own view of reality at all and your attitude is not helping. I've come to you for advice. For support. For... for... for the comfort of being gifted with some kind of insight into what, exactly, could be going on in Potter's crazy mind, but you... you are actually confusing me further. You are attacking me. Insulting me. You are driving me spare!..."

The tea appeared beside their seats at that very second and it was a most welcome distraction. He was relived for the excuse to lower his own gaze and ignore the heartfelt sigh that had escaped his companion's throat. He attempted to gain more time to think by picking up his cup and blowing on it gently, but his effort was interrupted by Luc's incensed rant:

"I know perfectly well why you've come to me and, if you really are as honest with yourself as you've always claimed, then you'll have to agree with me eventually.

You know that I don't particularly like our great Saviour. You also know that the both of us have been engaged in a most foul little tug-of-war over you, in these last few weeks...

You've come here expecting me to tell you to put distance between the two of you. You want me to expose Potter as a liar. To side with you when you turn viciously against him. You want me to be your ally in your own battle against him, don't you, Severus?. You are planning to rip him to shreds and you want my help"

He had frozen where he sat. He was stunned by the sharpness of the pain that shot through his every cell upon hearing those words. He hadn't actually realized before this second that his decision had already been made. Nor had he actually began to imagine how much it would hurt him to even think of... separating himself from Potter...

Losing their friendship forever seemed too high a prize to pay. He didn't want to do that. He felt like howling with outraged fury. He felt like tearing the whole world apart, for having dared to force him into making this decision.

"He has been playing sick little games with me!. He has... mocked me with his lies. He... promised me friendship and now... now he's done this..."

Luc looked pale and deathly determined. His hands were curled into fists that betrayed a great tension. His eyes were shining with distress. His lips had thinned and his posture had become too rigid to successfully fake calmness, but when he spoke he pronounced every word perfectly. Precisely. With an unnerving kind of fierce restraint:

"I don't believe that he's done any of those things, Severus"

He was enraged by the daring of that answer.

"How can you look me in the eye and say this to me?. Last night that boy told me that he loves me. He went as far as to insist that he'd marry me, if I let him. He... propositioned me. Sexually, Luc!. What part of that sounds like the truth to you?"

A nerve began to twitch wildly on his friend's perfectly shaved jaw. But Luc's eyes, those pale gray eyes that could freeze a crazed banshee, shone like hard diamond.

"All of it. I think that all of it is true, Severus. I've been trying to imply as much since you were in the hospital. I believe that the boy has romantic feelings for you. I'm reasonably certain that I'm not the only one with these suspicions, either. I'd bet my fortune on the idea that he will feel honored indeed if you actually accepted this... annoyingly premature... proposal of his"

His mind could not comprehend those words for a whole minute and, when it did, he could not believe that they had actually spilled forth form Luc's own lips.

He was floundering with horrified shock. His eyes bulged and his face paled. His whole body started to tremble with the stricken, utterly unwelcome realization that his friend... his friend was mad.

"Are you even listening to yourself, Luc?. That boy has been pining for Miss Weasley since he discovered what actual romance really means!.

Since I clearly remember that girl's affections having firmly turned in Mr. Thomas' direction, during the last year of the war, I can only surmise that Potter must have shifted his illusions towards Miss Granger. They did spend an awfully long time together while they were incommunicado, after all"

Luc didn't even bother to hide his bark of derisive laughter.

"Granger?... That blasted chit has been joined at the hip to Ronald Weasley since before they left school. They married as soon as the war was over, Severus. They even have a year old child, for Merlin's sake!"

That last statement caught him entirely by surprise. He hadn't known that part... no one had mentioned a child to him in the few occasions when those two had visited Potter's apartment.

"So she is married now and has a child. That doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't feel... things... for her."

"Potter is gay, Severus"

He could not cope with that idea. Could not comprehend what he was being told. Could not accept the fact that he could have been so badly mistaken, about so many things...

"No. That's just... it is impossible!"

"It's common knowledge, my friend. You could ask anyone and everyone will tell you the same thing: The Saviour prefers men. He is not in love with Granger. He can't be!. The very idea is preposterous!."

There was a coil of genuine dread slithering slowly down his spine, turning his whole being into a single monolith of frozen ice and paralyzing terror.

"Even if that is true, it still doesn't mean that he loves ME!"

Luc's nostrils flared on the receiving end of that unvoiced challenge. They were both slytherin enough to understand that Severus required proof. A proof that, Merlin help him, his friend seemed determined to provide.

He remained seated were he was. Literally incapable of moving his body a single inch as he looked straight into those pale gray eyes and felt as if the whole of his future was about to be decided in this second. His entire belief system was being firmly dismantled. His every assumption about the boy, about the friendship that they had both started, about the... intensity... of those moments that he had tried so hard to ignore was being re-aligned. Shaken. Turned upside down without mercy.

His heart banged inside his chest and his breath hitched. His very blood seemed to have slowed down in terrified expectation of the other man's answer, only... when that answer finally reached his ears it didn't seem to make much sense at all. It was so totally unexpected that he frowned.

"Could you describe Healer Peterssen to me, Severus?"

The simple question made him feel inexplicably sick and he blinked in absolutely distressed disconcertion. He could not understand what was happening here.

"What's there that you don't know, Luc? The man is a sadistic son of a bitch!"

There was a softly derisive snort followed by a sharp wave of his companion's right hand.

"I meant physically, Severus. Do you actually recall what he looks like?"

"Why?. Haven't you seen him?. I don't understand why you've brought that bloody bastard into this conversation"

Luc didn't waver. His pale face had acquired the very appearance of hewn granite and he looked ready to tame actual Giants, if he had to.

"Just... humor me on this, please"

The tea that he'd been sipping until that very second started to roll inside his belly as if it were a lethally dark poison. He was having more than second thoughts about the wisdom of his decision to come here. He could not see were the conversation might be going. Couldn't see any possible connexion between the topic of Potter's supposed affection towards him and the insane jerk that had tortured him, almost to death, during his brief stint in Azkaban. Now, though, his curiosity was piqued. Now he had to know. He just... had to.

"He is tall and thin like a reed. Pale skinned. Quiet. Elegant. He moves slowly and silently, like a cat. He speaks with an upper class accent that can't hide the fact that he... looks down on everyone around him. He has a thin mouth. A long nose. Dark eyes. Dark hair. He looks... I don't know... What exactly is it that you want me to tell you, Luc?"

There was a small, terrible smile curving his friend's lips. There was a kind of shattered quality to his pale gaze. An expectant sort of rigidity to his very posture and there was a look that could kill in his eyes...

"Doesn't that description remind you of anyone you know, Severus?. Wouldn't those same words be perfectly acceptable to portray a picture of... you?.

Aren't you also pale and thin and tall enough to make a willow weep?. Aren't you also restrained and elegant and mostly derisive towards those around you?. Aren't your eyes black like ebony? Isn't your hair the color of midnight?...

Wouldn't you say then, Severus, that, at least on words alone, you do look very much like healer Peterssen?"

If the world had stopped turning right at that second he most probably wouldn't have noticed it. He felt... devastated by this truly unwelcome comparison. He was... utterly revolted by the idea. He was positively shattered by the loathsome implications that he could now guess were buried under the poisonous... carcass... of this particular monster...

He stood up with an agitated, jerky movement. The fragile teacup that he had been holding shattered against the floor with a loud crack as he all but jumped away from his seat. Hands thrown up, in front of his own chest, in a purely defensive gesture that seemed to rile his friend enough to also bring him to his feet.

"Severus, you've got to listen to me!"

There was no force on this Earth that would make him do such a thing!.

"No. NO, Luc!. I do not want to hear any of this!. Whatever it is, whoever it affects, you must let this dragon lie..."

The silence that followed was fraught with deep tension. Lucius was pale. He was fiercely furious. He seemed about ready to bring down the whole dammed wards to seal the room.

"I wish I could do that, Severus!. I wish to Hell that I could. I don't think you are strong enough to be confronted with any of this just yet. It's way too soon... But Potter... bloody-stupid-Potter had to go and rush you into a retreat.

I am not prepared to stand aside and let you throw away this chance to find true happiness, though. Not yet. Not unless you try this first and then tell me that it can't possibly work!"

He stood back. Afraid. Aghast. Utterly astonished by the fact that he'd been right... with a fierce wave of his wand Luc had locked down the doors, barring all exits.

"Open the door, Luc!. I mean it. You can not keep me here against my will!" He warned in a tone that was as hard as the very bricks of Hogwarts. He was mad enough to punch his friend of almost 30 years on the nose. He was incensed beyond reason. He was trembling like a leaf. He was livid with anger...

"Potter met that bastard on the job. He got injured and was taken to St. Mungo's”

"Luc, I am warning you. I do not want to hear any of this. You need to shut the Hell up and let me out. NOW!"

His furious interruption merely drove the other man to petrify him. He could not believe his friend had dared to attack him in that manner. Least of all when Lucius actually knew that he could not retaliate. He was accioed and then placed back on his recently vacated chair.

He was forced to endure this. Forced into a magical immovability by the one man on Earth he would have never expected to betray him. He could not physically remove himself from the situation any longer, but his every sense was alive with indignant rancor. He was fuming so hard that his eyes were shooting lethally poisoned daggers at his so-called best friend.

Luc knelt beside his unresponsive body. Gently arranging his limbs into a more comfortable position before fixing troubled gray eyes upon his own.

"I know that you hate me right now, my friend. I know that you feel that I've... turned my back on you. But this... this I've got to do!. This I won't let go. Not yet.

I can't let you go back to that castle and send Potter packing. I just can't!. This is the best thing that has happened to you for a long time and I love you enough to risk losing our friendship, if it means that you'll find happiness, Severus"

A visibly trembling hand dug wavering furrows through Luc's silky blond locks with uncharacteristic carelessness. There was a small beat of silence as his friend swallowed with obvious difficulty. He seemed to be thinking over what he was about to say, planning his next words with a great care...

"Potter was rushed to the ER after one of his missions went belly up. I don't know the details, but I know that he was badly injured... Peterssen was the healer on-call. He took care of the boy and then proceeded to tear him a new one over the reckless behavior that had led him to be injured in the first place.

No one had dared to speak thus to Potter in a very long time, you see?. He was held in almost... god-like awe after the war. When Peterssen screamed at him, in front of half the St. Mungo's staff, no less, it was an absolute scandal. The healer got suspended for six moths, but Potter... Potter was hooked!"

Luc came to a sudden halt then. Gaze turned inwards and face drawn with obvious stress. The silence pulsed around them with a suffocating, thunderous energy and Severus wished that he could vanish himself home right at that second.

"I believe that Harry Potter saw a living, talking, thinking image of you in healer Peterssen. I believe that he... he'd given up on your eventual recovery by that time. I believe that he was willing to settle for a second-rate copy of you, if he couldn't have you...

The fact is that they got involved and, for a while, it became quite serious.

Then we got a break on your case and Potter refused to leave your bedside. He literally moved to the castle. He left both work and relationship hanging. He cared for nothing but pushing you back to health... after a while Peterssen got fed up. He came to Hogwarts and screamed at the boy...

It was ghastly, Severus. Just... ghastly. They were rowing right outside the infirmary. Everybody heard them hurl awful things at each other. At the end of it all, Peterssen gave Potter a very simple choice: a living lover, who could respond to him in every way, or the half-dead shell of an enemy who had always hated him. A man who would most probably never recover...

“I choose the memory of a man who, even asleep, is a million times better than you'll ever be“... that's what Potter said, Severus. I heard him with my own ears. I was there, you see?.

It got printed in every paper there is for three months in a row. It was repeated in every language, in every country, in every household... It is now forever linked to your name: You, Severus Snape, are the man who even asleep is worth a million others...“

A lump lodged in his throat. It was heavy like granite and bitter, like old bile. He was devastated by the account that he'd just heard. Positively broken by the fact that he'd been tortured by the head auror's jilted lover in what appeared now to be a fit of dark jealousy...

He didn't realize that Luc had freed him from the constrains of the Petrificus until his whole upper body plopped without any strength against the backrest of his chair. He blinked dazedly. Utterly mortified to find that a film of hot tears were burning his dark eyes.

He swallowed convulsively, trying to calm himself. His mind was abuzz with a horrible kind of... anxious distress that he was simply unable to control.

Silence fell. A jagged, brutally cold, tense-filled quietude that heralded darkness. Chaos... For nothing good could possibly come out from this much madness...

"Severus?"

Luc's hand settled on his arm. Tugged him impatiently and he lowered his dark head in order to stare straight into the worried, pale gaze that rose to meet his.

"I don't know what you want me to do, Luc. I... I do not love Harry Potter."

The sentence echoed around the room like an explosive rebellion. Like a curse born to murder. Like the truth that it was...

His companion settled more comfortably on his knees and turned his blond head to the side, examining him pensively.

"Do you really think I don't know that, Severus?"

He was ruffled by that cryptic little answer. He was utterly fed-up with all these games.

"Then... why the Hell did you lock me inside this bloody room?. Why bother to tell me all this, against my explicit instructions to keep quiet?. What is it that you are expecting me to do with all of this... utterly useless knowledge?"

Luc shrugged his wide shoulders and a smile that was as ruthless as it was beautiful curved his pink lips.

"This is the life that I, among a dozen others, fought so hard to give you, Severus. You have the right to know these things!. They are a part of your past that you could not witness. They are coloring your present. They can, so very easily, change your whole future for the better... Harry Potter does love you. I think every bloody witch and wizard alive knows it. And now... now you know it too"

"I do not feel the same, Luc. I thought he wanted a friendship. I've been in love with his mother my whole life!"

The aristocrat's snort was a work of sheer disdain.

"Did you truly love her or just... the idea of her?. She was beautiful, I agree, Severus. She was charming and smart and she was popular. She didn't care for what others thought about her involvement with you and refused to turn her back on you. For a long time... she was a dream come true for the isolated and insecure little boy you used to be...You put her on a pedestal and she let you. You loved her with the hope of a child who wanted to believe in fairy tales. It was never about real emotion, it was just... an illusion. A dream. A magnificently beautiful hope that turned out to be worthless in the end..."

Hot tears fell, at last, from his dark eyes. They burned the skin of his cheeks like twin rivers of lava. He was being savaged in this second. His entire heart... his most precious emotions, his most tender affections lay trampled and shredded to ribbons under Lucius Malfoy's boots.

"Be quiet now, Luc!. Please... If there was ever a time when I needed you to just... shush... that time is now"

A pale hand, burdened with the dazzling gold and silver of richly engraved rings, rose towards his pale features. His shameful tears were dried in utter silence. His hair was combed. His friend remained by his side for a long time...

Eventually, though, he shifted. Attempted to sit forwards. Removed his whole frame from all contact with Luc's hands. He wondered what to do. What to say. He felt worse than he had felt before he arrived...

"Could you love him, Severus?"

The unexpected question broke the suffocating tension and he turned, sharply, to stare towards his friend. Luc held his gaze with a look born of nothing but pure challenge, sheer determination and a fierce need to know.

"Excuse me?"

"I asked you if you think that you could love him. Maybe not now. Nor tomorrow. Maybe not even next year or the next, but... someday, in the future...

Is it truly so unthinkable to imagine that you might come to... reciprocate... Potter's feelings?"

He was rendered speechless by the idea. He was... utterly astonished by the very concept that he should... what?. Keep Potter hanging with the promise of a future that might never come for them?.

"I can't!. I won't. I'm not telling that child to waste his life on me, on the off chance that I might change my mind. That's just... it's unconscionable, Luc!"

"Do you really think he'll forget you?. He hung on to you when every one around him told him that you were as good as lost to the rest of us. He has hoped beyond hope, Severus!. He has... adored you every single second of the last four years despite the fact that you... you didn't even know it!.

A man like this will not give up. He won't let go just because you tell him to. He'll go back to love you from afar!.

If you want to go ahead and sever all your ties with him then, by all means, do it. But do it for yourself. To benefit no one but you. Do not make this decision trying to save him, because he doesn't want to be saved.

I think that you should treat this as a chance. An opportunity to find out if you could truly come to care for him, at some point. Tell him that you are uncertain. Tell him to just... wait. Tell him that you need more time and I promise you, Severus... that he'll give it to you"

He rose from his seat in utter agitation. He was burdened by an awfully tight pressure that was crushing his whole chest, settling over his rolling stomach and curtailing his freedom to breathe properly.

"I. Do. Not. Love. Him.! He is a child. HER child, Lucius!"

His friend turned around to stare at him, outraged disagreement was openly flashing from within the pale beauty of those gray eyes. There was a nerve pulsing constantly on the side of Luc's firm jaw and the most absolute despair was weighing those wide shoulders down.

"Harry Potter is the kind of person that you wanted Evans to be!. He loves you with the kind of devotion that she never felt towards you. He is alive while she... She. Is. DEAD, Severus!. She has been dead, by now, for longer than she lived.

Even if you decide that her son is not to your taste, there will be others. You are now perceived as a great warrior. You are a hero of almost legendary proportions. There will be opportunities open to you that were never there before. You could find a companion, someone who will love you and care for you, but you need to let HER go. You've got to... You'll never find happiness otherwise!"

He was shocked by that concept. Transfixed by the horrible idea of actively seeking to... forget her. How could he?. It didn't seem to be something that he could do, even if he wanted to.

"I don't know if that's even possible, Luc. I can't turn my own emotions, on and of, as if they are the water coming off a tap."

"How many times have you thought of her while you've been in the boy's presence?"

He frowned at the question and his lips thinned. He disliked analyzing his own actions, his own thoughts. He disliked having others analyze them even more.

"I don't know. He is very different from her. I have been trying to get to know the man he has become. I've told you this already: I thought we were building a friendship!"

Luc stood up then. He rolled his shoulders around, like a fighter. He shook his fair hair away from his pale eyes and looked straight at him with the kind of challenge that few men ever dared to send his way.

"Then build a friendship, Severus. What harm could that cause you?. Get to know him. Don't think about any of this and just... go on as you have been. See where it leads you"

His heart clenched. His breath halted. He could not cope with the anxiety that this conversation was causing him...

"I can't do that now. He does NOT want just a friendship, Luc. He wants MARRIAGE!"

"So?. He can't marry you unless you agree. You have every advantage here. Do not close this door unless you are certain that it can't lead to your happiness, Severus.

I have seen this boy grow up. I have seen what he has done for you, on your behalf... I have seen in his actions the kind of devotion that is very hard to find... He loves you just like you deserve to be loved.

He is young. Attractive. Rich. Loyal. A hero in his own right... There's nothing undesirable there. You'll never be second-best with him. You'll never be cherished only among shadows, either. You'll be his everything. Up front. In public... What else is there that you want?"

The question rang. And rang. AND RANG. It echoed in the sudden silence of the room like the utterly frustrated bark that it truly was. He heard it not only with his ears but also with the whole of his mind. With the whole of his heart. With the whole of himself...

He could understand Luc's argument, he truly could. But he was also unable to dismiss his own concepts of right and wrong regarding this. He could not consider entering into any kind of... relationship... with the child. Not when he didn't feel what he should. Not as a means to break away from his own loneliness, because that would turn out to be a disaster...

"I want truth, Luc. I won't use him. I can't!. I just... can't"

"I'm not telling you to use him. I'm telling you to wait and see. This could be the best thing that's ever happened to you, Severus!"

He could see that they'd get nowhere from here. They had become entrenched. Both disagreeing at a very basic level and unable to reconcile to the other's point of view. He needed to think about this with the kind of calmness that he wouldn't find right here, he needed to cut himself free from the pressure that Luc was trying to put on him...

"I need to get back"

His friend's sigh was so explosive that it echoed around the walls with the strength of a scream.

"Don't do it, my friend. Please, just... DON'T!"

They both looked at each other for a second. Silence settled between them like a thick veil.

"I have to get back to the castle before they send out a search party, Luc. I came out without informing anyone of my whereabouts... They might be worried."

With a sharp wave of his wand the owner of the house opened the door that he'd, so forcefully, locked down earlier.

Severus turned around and walked determinedly away without uttering a single word further. His footsteps echoed on the marble floor like the loud roar of thunder, making him cringe. He wanted nothing more than to leave the room behind...

"Severus"

He'd just reached the doorway when he heard Luc's voice calling him back. His friend would make one last attempt to sway him, then. He'd play one last card...

"Yes?"

"What are you going to do?"

The simplicity of the question caught him on the raw. He'd been expecting some kind of last-minute argument. With a hand already on the doorknob he turned his head around, in order to stare straight into those pale and worried gray eyes.

"I don't know, Luc. I need to think. I'm too confused... I don't honestly know what I will do...”

 TBC...

  

Ch26

Ch28