The voice under all silences. Chapter 29

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 29. 

The first thing that he saw, as he entered his office, was the crate that stood in the middle of his desk.

He frowned at it in disconcerted wariness. Mind abuzz with about a million images of the kind of horrific token that some disgruntled former enemy could have decided to send him as a pointed welcome-back message that could not be misinterpreted.

He'd been back at Hogwarts for a week already and still hadn't managed to adjust to the bewildering experience of finding himself treated with... respect. He found it very hard to interact with anyone he hadn't been close to before, because the deference with which they treated him now, compared to the almost disdainful indifference of the past, was so jarring to his senses that he just couldn't relax...

In a matter of days he'd taken to avoiding others altogether. Sequestering himself within the safety of the Headmaster's Tower for hours on end and requesting that either Draco or Minnie accompany him, whenever he'd been forced to... accept the visit of one or other envoy from the ministry or a member of the board.

He'd invariably do the same whether he confronted a worried parent or a distraught child. Whether it was another hopeful candidate for a potions mentorship that he had no intention to ever concede, urging him to consider their curriculum. Promising, in vain, to shower the school with untold wealth, if only he'd agree to bestow upon them the riches of his knowledge...

He was more surprised than appalled by the idea that the crate might actually contain some crazed potion's student newest attempt at convincing him to accept their mentorship application by the liberal use of plain, old-fashioned bribery.

His loud sigh shattered the oppressive silence of the office and he rubbed the bridge of his nose with a sharp, but soothing, motion and wondered when, if ever, would the astonishingly large number of... hopefuls... actually realize that he had no intention whatsoever of considering their applications. Or propositions. Or... whatever the Hell it was that they plotted to offer him as an enticement.

Nothing, absolutely nothing sort of a complete brain transplant, would ever convince him that it was a good idea for him to go back to teaching...

For a second or two he simply stood in the doorway, narrowed black eyes fixed upon the box as he attempted to decide what he should do. Although his presence in the castle seemed to be encouraging his own magic to return, he was not strong enough yet to cast any kind of detection spell. Not those that were worth the breath to actually pronounce them, anyway.

He suspected that Hogwarts itself had been pouring sheer magic energy into him, in order to kick-start his own depleted reserves of power and, therefore, wasn't actually certain if the few Lumos spells that he'd managed to perform were the result of his own slow, but certain, recuperation or if he had the over-eager and protective nature of the ancient school to thank for it.

Should he risk then opening this thing while he was alone, literally unarmed and without recourse to magical help? He cared not for those kinds of odds.

It came down to whom should he call in to assist him then...

Was he willing to open whatever this might be in Minnie's presence and allow her to be witness to some truly embarrassing... offering?. Was he willing to bring Draco into his office and expose him to the possibility that this might contain a deathly curse of some kind?. He didn't like those odds, either.

He sighed then. Frustrated with himself. With the obsolete, but crippling paranoia that he could not really abandon. With the disturbing suspicion that this would turn out to be nothing of an embarrassing or harmful nature...

He knew that times had changed. That the perception others had now of him had definitely shifted for the better. He knew that there was absolutely no reason why anyone would be attempting to attack him in any way through this perfectly harmful package, but he could not shake off his whole past... Couldn't abandon a life lived as the wary victim of other people's cruelty. As the recipient of truly soul-destroying scorn. Of plain, vindictive hatred. Of the kind of brutal, self-appointed justice that had been performed against him. On him... by a truly awe-inspiring number of pissed-off-folks, during his life-time...

"You could always call in a school elf, Severus"

Albus' voice broke the silence. The old man sat within his frame and looked down at him with a soft and sad expression that brought deep shadows to the blue eyes that used to shine brightly, with all-knowing contentment, while he'd been alive.

"What if whatever lies within is truly hostile?. An elf wouldn't think to attack it without being ordered to do it. Neither it nor I would have time enough to bother with such niceties if this turns out to contain something lethal, Albus!"

That awful darkness that tainted Albus' painted eyes grew. Severus hated to see it. He literally detested it!. He could not understand how it was possible for his old mentor's portrait to portray so much saddened sorrow, when the man himself had been an endless well of optimistic joie de vivre...

"This is Hogwarts, Severus. This castle protects its own with so much zeal that not a single one of it's Headmasters has been struck down while in the line of duty. If there was anything at all harmful to you, contained inside that thing, the package itself wouldn't have made it to your desk, my dear boy"

Severus shivered in distressed reaction to the old man's careless words.

"You forget that you were in fact struck down while in the line of duty, Albus!.You forget that it happened right here, in this very building, and that the wand that brought your life to a halt was held by my own hand!. Hogwarts is not infallible. You'd be still among us if it was..."

There were shocked gasps all around as the rest of the portraits decided that the conversation had entered the realms of the truly contentious.

Somewhere towards Severus's right Headmaster Black chuckled with dark amusement.

"Not even his blasted phoenix bird could have kept that old bastard alive for much longer, Snape!. The school allowed Dumbledore to die thus because the man was determined to do so at the most convenient time that he could find. Even you'll have to agree that he couldn't possibly have chosen a better occasion to bestow his selfless sacrifice onto the unsuspecting world, if he tried.

Headmaster Dumbledore wanted to die and so he did. What's more... he wanted you to kill him!. If he'd considered you an enemy on that tower you'd have been toast before your wand ever made it out of it's holder, child. You should let the old baggage go, you know?. All the mopping that has been going on around here for the last four years or so is really starting to get on my nerves..."

"Phineas!. I can't believe how heartless you can be!. We've been dealing with a very unusual situation all this time. Headmaster Snape wasn't even aware of what was happening... There's a time for impatience and there is also a time for compassion, my friend. Understanding has never been your forte, of course. But even so, I hoped you'd do better than this." Headmistress Merryfield berated her fellow in affronted outrage from across the room and the whole office exploded into a literal cacophony of half-muttered whispers.

The very first signs of a tension headache began to pound behind his eyes and he fervently wished that they'd all either shut the Hell up or disappear. To his utter astonishment that's exactly what happened a mere second later and he wondered anew if the magic that accomplished his wish had been a spark of accidental power being released by his own recovering magic, or if the castle had decided to grant it to him.

Either way it left him utterly alone in the eerily quiet office. Wincing, in absolute dread, at the prospect of enduring their irritated lectures on the proper courtesy that should be given to the subjects of magical portraits when they finally managed to return.

His feet moved forwards of their own accord and he approached the desk. Dark eyes fixed on the heavy box as Albus' reassurance that the castle wards would have rejected it outright if it were truly dangerous flashed through his mind.

His heart lodged in his throat as his gaze settled on the cover of the package and he read the inscription that someone had painstakingly inked onto the lid:

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

He could not reconcile this neat scrawl with the memory he had of Potter's infernal handwriting, but he knew of no one else who could have inked this message. In his mind, these ten words belonged to the auror. They were Potter's. Only his. He had used them once before to give him a gift that had been beyond precious and Severus could not imagine what else the gryffindor could have to offer him that should require these particular words to be penned anew...

He hadn't been expecting to receive any sort of... token... from the gryffindor. Specially not after the way they'd parted. Not after having to literally drag himself through the painful emptiness that the absence of the man seemed to have left behind.

The week had been long and hard. It had been filled with nothing but duty, dignity, responsibility...

He hadn't been ruthlessly forced into enjoying himself, despite his own misgivings, by anyone. Nor had he been pushed out of his comfort zone in order to enjoy, or hate, a new and possibly idiotic hobby that the brat had picked out from only Salazar knew where...

There hadn't been much time for anything other than work and sleep during the week, so much so, that he'd been secretly longing for the weekend to arrive. He felt he needed some time to sit and think about what was going on in his exhausting second chance at life. He needed to process all recent developments. He needed to... ponder and plan for the future, take stock of his present and decide where exactly it was that he has heading...

He'd been too busy for any of that, though, and for the first few days after his last devastating encounter with Potter he'd been too glad of the reprieve to even bother acknowledging that there was something that felt too much like dissatisfaction niggling at the back of his mind all the time.

Potter had set him free of their oath and then he'd simply...walked away. Despite all those avowals of love. Despite Luc's anxious assurances that pushing the brat away would just... not work. The truth was that it had been almost insultingly easy to get rid of the man.

Severus had said no and that was all that had been needed. He hadn't even been worth the time that a single, half-hearted attempt to change his mind would have required... He'd received no owl post. No floo call. No further knocking, within the strong walls that protected his suspicious mind, had heralded a visit, no matter how short, from the bloody child.

Love seemed to be as easily forgotten by Harry Potter as that eerily empty apartment of his had first suggested...

A cold shiver run up and down Severus' spine and he suppressed the desire to rub at his own arms in a vain attempt to warm himself up. What he needed wasn't friction-induced heat, no. What he needed was the strength to convince himself of the fact that, no matter how much it hurt, he'd been right about this whole debacle... Potter had come, messed him up completely, and then had proceeded to promptly abandon him, just like his mother had done so long ago...

He sighed in the oppressive silence of the room, exhaling a frustrated lungful of air in a loud and exasperated gasp. He was utterly vexed with his own maudlin thoughts.

So... after a whole week of silence the boy had decided to send something. He wondered what it could be, trying to decide if satisfying his own curiosity on the matter would be worth the humiliation.

He had no doubt as to the fact that this... this would probably end up being Potter's grand, or maybe even not so grand, goodbye gesture. A token to remember the very brief friendship they had once tried to build. The official gravestone to be placed over a relationship that Severus himself had had great hopes for. The last, awful second of their painfully unlikely “us”...

As his pale fingers closed around the width of his own wand he could freely acknowledge that he did not want to open this box. He'd have preferred the endless silence. The hurtful absence. The unequivocal proof that he'd been right all along, a heartbreaking confirmation that he'd struggled not to see in Potter's unusual distance as one day had turned into another without a single instant of contact between them.

Now there'd be a last word. A grand gesture. A new memory to be shoved into the box he'd marked inside his head with the word: disaster. The box that held both Potter and his mother. The box that held his parents. And the Dark Lord. The box that held his blind faith in Albus Dumbledore...

Despite his own almost absentminded certainty that his wand would fail to respond to his harshly whispered command. Power thrummed through the slender length of birch and the wooden lid lifted. The box laid open before him. Exposing its lovingly wrapped contents to his own dark eyed stare.

He recognized the items at once. Their loveliness remained unmarred by the packaging material meant to protect them: There was a cup with its saucer. There was a teapot to match. There was a cream jug and a sugar bowl. There was a heavy set of silver cutlery...

His heart halted in his chest and a pain that was so raw, so strong, that it should have killed him on the spot raked his body. His mind. His very soul.

A lone tear ran down the pale, ashen skin of his cheekbone and his throat constricted with the most awful sense of loss that he'd endured since the night he'd murdered Albus.

"So much for trusting you, Potter!..." He growled those words savagely into the cutting silence and only the very real certainty that he might actually go mad if he destroyed this last tangible link to his latest attempt at... trusting... another soul with his battered heart saved the tea set from being brutally smashed against the wall.

"You never learn. Do you, Severus?... How many more tries will it take for you to realize that you are only meant for loneliness?..."

No one answered his question, of course. There was nobody here to witness his shameful display of emotion. But he felt even worse for having uttered the words aloud. They were weak, self-pitying. They were truly unworthy of him. They were just...

The thought froze in his head as he felt the sudden and familiar surge of Potter's warm magic. There was something in the box that pulsed with raw power. Something other than these items that the child had bestowed upon his person on the very first morning they'd spent together in that flat. There was something else here that was meant for his eyes alone. He could feel the gentle thrum of a low-key notice-me spell as he brought his face closer, to peer beyond the layers of bubbly, protective wrapping. That was when he saw it: a folded piece of thick parchment had been shoved between the mouth of the teapot and its lid...

He swallowed thickly. Truly horrified by the overwhelming sense of bone-melting trepidation that had seized his every muscle. Panic... sheer, unadulterated panic was turning his every bone into rigid, unyielding stone as he stood beside his desk as if rooted to the spot.

His eyes burned with the unwillingness of those who fear the worst, but he could now not leave this alone. He had to know what the boy's last words to him were. He had to find out what it was exactly that Harry Potter believed he deserved to have in lieu of... goodbye.

His hand shook as he forced himself to reach for the note, trembling fingertips brushed the cold porcelain very briefly as they pulled out the parchment.

With his prize finally in hand he stood and waited for the thundering roar in his ears to abate somewhat. Time elapsed into a vacuum of unwilling, desolate mourning. He could not summon the courage to confront this folded note.

Finally his legs folded and he flopped down, onto his chair, like a fallen tree. Like a lump of boneless matter. Like a puppet whose strings have been cut lose by it's merciless creator...The smile that curved his lips then was a heartbroken rendition of defeat. A recognition of sorrow. A pained acknowledgement that he... he had risked. And he had lost a very dear friend. Again!.

His hand straightened the parchment between quivering finger-pads. It took but a moment to read the short few lines of script that had been scrawled across the otherwise flawless extension of white parchment with such force that the quill had actually poked at least three wholes through the thick paper:

You've had one week of grace, Severus Snape. You could have tried, but you decided not to.

Now we are going to do this my way: Retreat is not an option that's open to you!. Do you understand me?. I'm the other half of this friendship and I DO NOT GIVE UP ON MY FRIENDS!.

I'm coming in for Tea. Your office. Five o'clock. You better be there!

Yours. Always.

Harry.

He could not comprehend exactly what in the bloody Hell the boy could possibly mean, at least not at the beginning.

The words swirled before his eyes as he re-read them at least three times before his disbelieving eyes dared to even accept that they were, in fact, clearly written in this note...

He stared, dumbfounded, at the irksome careless handwriting and his insides twisted with dread. Potter... Potter was coming!... He was coming here: to the castle. He... he'd be here in less than six hours with the obvious intention of... rescuing... their doomed friendship from its death-throes...

Severus' heart froze in his chest even as a dizzying wave of almost sickened relief raced trough his every bone. Through his every muscle.

He was horrified and elated in equal measure. He was... frightened enough to throw up!. He could not even begin to describe just how... truly overwhelming he found the very idea of seeing Potter again...

His palms started to sweat and he felt numb with uncharacteristic worry. With distressed self-doubt. With discomfited uncertainty.

He didn't like to be pushed into things. He didn't appreciate to have his misgivings about this ignored. He didn't feel comfortable with this whole situation...

Was he really going to sit here, like a meek, chastised child, and accept the auror's highhanded attitude?... Was he truly going to allow James Potter's son to... walk all over him?. Was he really so... desperate... for friendship that he'd ignore his very valid reasons for demanding that they cut their budding relationship short?.

Dark eyes roamed through his office and he found himself alone. So alone...

He had always been a man driven by duty. He had wanted the respect of those around him, based on the things he had accomplished, not on his appearance or the foulness of his temper...

He had always desired to... triumph. To be recognized by wizarding society. To be given the accolades that he'd believed to have earned through his efforts.

Now he had all that and more, but... in this last week he'd learned to be quite weary of those around him. It was astonishing to see the change in people. How they hung on to his words. How they looked up to him. How they were clearly in awe to be in his presence...

He'd found it all rather exhausting. Frightening. Uncomfortable. He'd realized that his old dreams had been nothing but blind wishfulness on his part. Envy. Idiocy...

He was not a man made to be on the spotlight. He was not a leader meant to... encourage others into action. He was not wise enough to guide other people. He was just... a man... who had no clue as to what he wanted, a soul who'd lost direction long ago. A frightened, shy youth trapped inside the body of a forty year old adult...

He tried to imagine this strangely unsatisfying existence that he'd been living for the last week stretching endlessly ahead of him, all the way up to the moment of his death, and shuddered. He'd be walking over the very same footsteps that had made him a harsh professor in the past. He was unerringly setting his existence up for another second serving of the same bitter discontentment. Of the same empty... everything...

He wanted to do better this time around, but did that truly mean that he should stick with Potter?. Shouldn't he simply try to... replace... the auror with some other person willing to offer him honest friendship, without the messy emotions that the boy had dared to bring into the equation?.

He didn't know who would be willing to step into the gryffindor's shoes, but... he could at the very least try to find that out. If he really, truly, wanted to. The very idea turned his stomach, though. As incomprehensible as it might sound he couldn't ignore the fact that he didn't want another cold and formal friendship. He didn't want some emotionless arrangement. He didn't even want a... lukewarm and respectfully polite sharing of company with whomever else he could lure into maintaining some sort of relationship with him...

No matter how much it hurt, dealing with the idea of losing the man altogether still felt like a far easier proposition than the onerous prospect of trying to keep Potter in his life, but... he could now not imagine a fate that was worse than one utterly devoid of the kind of... madness... that Potter excelled at. He couldn't find the strength to reconcile himself to a future that contained only duty...

He was so terrified of ending up exactly were he'd been when he'd first died that he couldn't even contemplate the idea of just... walking away right now. He couldn't bring himself to abandon his office altogether and remain absent from it until such a time as the auror understood that he couldn't be pushed around like a little rag doll...

He was mostly certain that, if he were to follow that particular course of action, the boy would take the hint. No one in his right mind would persist in seeking a friendship that had been so openly and cruelly rejected, only... he missed the child so badly... He'd rattled along the corridors all week long feeling lost and dejected. Lonely... He couldn't throw away the auror's willingness to save their ailing friendship for something as unimportant as a show of almost teenage-like oneupmanship meant to soothe his wounded pride...

If he wanted to... save... whatever might be left of their relationship then he needed the boy's help to get past his own damaging resistance. He needed to accept that Potter... Potter was a much better balanced individual, when it came to things like keeping up and maintaining worthwhile interpersonal relationships with others, than he himself had ever been. The man had had the same group of friends since he was eleven, for goodness sake!.

He'd found himself a whole replacement family within the first few months of arriving at Hogwarts and had managed to keep them in his life, despite the fact that he'd been the most viciously pursued target on the Dark Lord's list...

Potter knew what he was doing, of that Severus had not the slightest doubt. This was a field where the man had actual, proven expertise.

He just had to... remember... that. He had to follow Potter's lead. He had to swallow his pride here and allow Potter to take control of this thing that they were building, or he would end up destroying it altogether out of fear...

The mere thought settled in his gut with the heaviness of a tombstone and he blinked dazed black eyes as his mind whirled. Was he truly thinking of allowing himself to... proceed forwards... with Potter?...

"Dear Salazar, I must be mad!..."

His own whisper broke the heavy silence that surrounded him, startling him into a sudden, instinctive jerk. Potter's note fell to the ground at his feet and he lowered his gaze to stare at it. His eyes settled on the last scrawled sentence, reading the last three words aloud with anxious trepidation:

"Yours. Always. Harry..."

No one had ever promised him such a thing. No one!. He didn't even know if he wanted such a promise to be real. Or if he'd rather... see the boy become another's in a not so distant future...

He had once, a long time ago, allowed himself to develop an unrealistic affection for Mylton Klinius, the absolutely gorgeous captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. Then, during one of the most unfortunate moments of his wretched fourth year, he'd been caught by the boy's teammates sniffling a forgotten scarf that the object of his affections had... lost... in the changing rooms. He'd been subjected to such a cruelly violent punishment, for daring to have those kinds of... feelings... towards the other boy, that he'd never had the nerve to consider the possibility again.

Loving Lily had seemed much safer after that. She'd allowed him to get close enough to her. She had been a caring, lovely girl. She'd been his friend...

Maybe Luc had been onto something when he accused him of being in love with the mere idea of loving her. By now he didn't even know his own mind anymore... He couldn't even guess what he'd do, how he'd feel this afternoon. Or tomorrow. Or a year from today...

By now he only knew that he was afraid, but he felt... alive. He felt excited for the first time since he'd regained his freedom. He wanted to try. Just... try to see if they could indeed salvage at least some of the closeness they had forged.

He wanted to carry on risking his very sanity on Potter and see if the boy could indeed continue to live up to his every promise...

He figured that, if the gryffindor hadn't yet managed to stumble, if he hadn't given up on him altogether, if he'd stuck to this friendship of theirs and was fighting with tooth and nail to keep it safe, then... then it was Severus' turn to attempt to match him.

Faith... he'd match the boy faith for faith. Trust for trust. Courage for courage... He wanted to stay put and find the strength to confront whatever came his way. He wanted to stop hiding among fears. Among shyness. Among the ghosts of his own doubts... He wanted to give himself this one chance...

What he didn't want to do, though, was to hurt Potter. And he wondered which one of them would end up hurting the other the most, when the time to pay for the foolishness of continuing down this dangerous path finally arrived...

TBC...

  

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