The voice under all silences. Chapter 35

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 35

Being kissed by Harry Potter was a dizzyingly addictive pastime. The more it happened the more he craved it and he'd been shocked to discover that they both seemed to be unable to... converse... for any length of time without coming into some sort of physical contact nowadays. Harry liked to touch him constantly. He liked to grab him by the hand or hold his wrist. He called his attention by tapping him on the shoulder. He loved twirling his long hair around a tanned finger, or pushing it away from Severus' face by the simple action of curling it behind his ear. The boy seemed to just... plain and simply love him.

Despite his own unacknowledged certainty that the young auror would soon tire of him, they became even closer, spending almost all of their free time together sconced in either Severus' office or his rooms.

Christmas arrived just a few weeks after they'd became... kissing buddies... and, although Harry insistently tried to convince him that he should come with him to the Burrow and join in the Weasley clan celebrations for the holiday, he refused to do so with stubborn adamancy.

Every time Harry insisted that they should spend the vacation together he felt his very guts twist with cold dread. He wasn't ready to face anyone's opinion about this. Wasn't ready to bring the exact nature of their association out into the open and he knew the boy's loving displays would be impossible to curve while in the presence of all those he considered family, so he stuck to his unyielding resolution to refuse each and every possible variation of a Weasley-holiday-invitation that he was presented with, alleging that this would be the first year since the war when he'd be actually conscious on Christmas day and Draco deserved to have the pleasure of having his godfather back at home.

He could tell that the boy saw clearly through this explanation and was utterly certain that, no matter how logical or well prepared his arguments might have been, Harry could tell that he was just too afraid to come out into the open and confront public opinion about their... partnership. The sudden deepening of their relationship had remained largely unacknowledged, as far as he was aware, and he felt it was too early to... intrude into the boy's real life, so to speak. He'd remained so firm on that one point that no amount of arguing or cajoling had managed to solve the situation and, eventually, he'd been forced to glare at the bloody brat and threaten him with apparating himself straight into Luc's French Cottage, if he didn't stop pressuring him to face the Weasleys over a plate of Christmas turkey.

He had detested Harry's extreme reaction to those words with every fiber of his being, though. He'd felt guilty for having uttered them. Couldn't forget the hurt expression they had brought to the boy's beautiful eyes and, for a while, they'd both became hesitant and wary in each other's company. He'd felt bad for hurting the child, even in this minute way, and Harry... Harry had once told him that he didn't want to push him into committing to their relationship before he, himself, felt ready to do so...

Despite his own worries that the auror might loose interest in him and use the new strain in their interactions to... push him slowly away from his busy life, Harry persisted doggedly. Returning to his fire-calls and Saturday visits for tea. Kissing him, with ever-increasing desperation, at the end of every meeting and then looking straight at him as he slowly backed away. Dragging himself backwards, towards the doorway with such obvious reluctance that the experience of watching the boy struggle to abandon his office became an absolute torture that Severus could barely withstand.

As the students finally left for their vacation Hogwarts became a silent, forlorn husk. Ninety per cent of the teachers left the premises as soon as the kids did and he was left mostly alone. He rattled through the corridors and ate beside the fireplace in his office, unwilling to descend into the echoing emptiness of the Great Hall. To his shocked surprise he discovered that he missed the constant noise of the students. He missed the unending rants of his professors as they came up to him in the evenings to complain about this or that child. Or to argue their case for being granted new equipment or permission to change their lesson plan slightly...

He missed the loud cheering of unruly Quiditch practices and the constant flare of his fireplace as a hundred or so people attempted to draw his attention constantly every day.

Christmas day approached and with it everything slowed down. The grounds were heavy with snow and the air outside was too cold to brave a walk around the lake. Harry was busy with both work and family. The Weasleys who lived abroad began descending on the burrow and the boy had a number of obligations that were apparently unavoidable, like visiting Andromeda Black and her grandson or spending a whole weekend holed up with Seamus Finnegan somewhere on the Irish coast. Harry visited the families of aurors that had either retired during the year or perished while in the line of duty. He made time to catch up with Longbottom and the Lovegoods and even braved muggle London to go dine with Mr and Mrs Granger...

Severus had been invited to accompany the boy to every single one of those, too, but he'd declined them all without a second thought. Now he wished he'd accepted at least one. He felt lonely. He was bored. He understood that he hadn't been forgotten, but still felt as if his presence in the boy's life was a fragile and easily replaceable occurrence...

As one day slowly shifted into another and the unusual idleness began to drive him crazy he decided to return to his beloved lab. He hadn't had a single second to brew since his return. Not that he could do much, with his frequently erratic magic, but still... He could sort through unprepared ingredients. Check the potion stores and see if there was anything simple enough that needed to be made. If he encountered any trouble he could always recruit a castle elf to assist with the magical aspect of the potions...

The vacation became a blur of reading up on an amazingly extensive backlog of potion articles, sleepless nights and increasingly successful simple brews that allowed a new hope to grow within him. He began to realize that he missed working in the lab. He missed the austere and soothing constraints of his profession. He missed the intellectual challenge of attempting to perfect a working potion. Of imposing his own will over the natural reactions of a seemingly random mixture of ingredients.

Harry dropped by in the afternoons, whenever he was free, and laughed when he found him engrossed in the frowning contemplation of a gently bubbling cauldron. Those green eyes shone with a deep and unrestrained joy that he still found very difficult to respond to. Invariably he'd give up whichever project he'd been working on, leaving his precious brews under one of the boy's carefully placed stasis charms, and proceeded to sit beside the menace in a vain attempt at stifling the bloody child's amusement.

“You shouldn't stop your brewing for my benefit, Severus. I actually love to see you doing something that you so clearly enjoy...”

“I can't concentrate on it with you looking at me like that. It's like having a creepily young reincarnation of Albus looking over my shoulder”

They would sit side by side and spend a couple of hours chatting about the latest Weasleys to arrive or the horribly difficult task of buying a Secret Santa present for the manager of the auror's emergency floo-call network. As the afternoon turned into early evening outside, filling the lab windows with ever-increasing darkness, Harry would describe his plans for the rest of the evening in detail. He'd outline the food he'd eat, the games of chess he'd lose to Ronald, the newest fairy tale that he was reading to Theodore Lupin nowadays, even the gifts he was planing on getting for this or that one of his friends.

“Hermione and Ron, they are both easy. Even Mrs. Weasley and Andromeda are a piece of cake. But the one that really gets me every year is Mr. Malfoy. He's never liked anything I've gotten him so far and I... I can't give it up for a lost cause now, you know?. The less he likes what I got him, the more I tell myself that next year I'll nail it. Now I'm stuck between getting him another pin for his hair or a silk handkerchief”

He'd stilled in the act of taking a sip from his teacup, dark eyes widened with the kind of bewildered astonishment that brought another one of those annoyingly bright smiles to the boy's face.

“Luc... You've been buying Yule presents for Luc?”

Harry's laughter filled the office and a hand that was as bold as it was gentle rose up to steady his slightly tilting teacup in the next second.

“Don't look so shocked, Severus. It all started as a ploy to force the man into letting me inside his house to see you. I told him I'd bought you something for Christmas, and I couldn't very well show on his doorstep without having at least some token to offer him and his family, so... my first try was Firewhiskey, which he proceeded to snottily inform me that was actually from a reasonably decent label if you couldn't afford a proper brand.”

“You told him that... Wait. Wait.... You've been buying Yule presents for me?”

He was so genuinely shocked that he gaped at the child and it wasn't until he felt the boy's hands actually tug the saucer, that he still held between his hands, away from his slightly trembling grasp that he finally managed to blink and avert his uncomprehending dark eyes away.

“I wanted to see you. I got you a muggle recording machine that I bullied Hermione into charming for the purpose of reading potions texts out loud to you. You were still locked within your coma, Severus, and I... I wanted to help you in any way I could. That's the first ploy of mine that managed to get me past the manor's front door. After that... well, we all warred with each other for some time. Everything became easier once the Malfoys began to accept that I did genuinely want to help you.

As my feelings for you began to take shape, things also became harder around Yule. The holidays came and went, year after year, without bringing us any nearer to solving your situation. I began to wish for your recovery on New Year's Eve and on my birthdays. On Beltane. On Litha... I prayed to every God or Fairy I've ever heard about and still nothing worked.

I began to look at shop displays and see things that I'd love to get you for Christmas and I began to dream of a life far away from reality. A life lived beside you, a life where your eyes were wide open and you slept only at night. A life where you'd unwrap my presents with a smile on your lips and kiss me lovingly...”

His heart froze within his chest upon hearing this confession. He had known the boy had cared for him very deeply even before his waking, but... to hear him actually confess having invented a whole dream-like relationship felt so strange...

“Then I'm sure I'm disappointing your every expectation, Harry. I bet the version of me that you, so thoroughly, imagined wouldn't have refused to accompany you to the Weasley's for dinner...”

Gentle finger-pads settled on the side of his jaw and forced his head slowly around, until their eyes clashed once again. Harry's face looked both serious and tender. His eyes shone bright green with the kind of patient affection of a wise, far older man.

“They were only dreams. They were fragile things that left me utterly empty every sunrise. They held me a captive of my own impossible desires, while offering me not a smidgeon of the hope that your actual presence brings me. You might not be as... accommodating... as the man I dreamed up tended to be, but you are both more real and more you than he ever was. I know that I've been a pain in your arse with my insistence that you join us all for dinner, but... I do actually understand why you are being so cautious about it. This is too new, isn't it?. You are feeling threatened by the... homeliness... of the celebrations all around us and you don't want to rush into family entanglements until you feel far more certain of the strength of this relationship.

I might not like your doubting, Severus, but I get what's causing it, even if I don't always acknowledge that. I'm perfectly aware that I care for you at this exact moment far more deeply than you care for me. I had four whole years to accept that I do love you. I have dreamed about how it'd feel to finally have you around for so long that I just... I was blinded with the possibilities of it for a while. They won't come true this year, that's a given. But there's always next year, and the one after that... “

His throat clamped there and then and he was utterly unable to formulate a single sentence in response. The fire crackled loudly inside the hearth and amber tinged flame-light painted the boy with heavy, golden colored shadows. He became literally transfixed by the beauty he beheld. The boy was breathtakingly lovely... His eyes shone and his mouth smiled, his dark hair looked wild and his face held such expression of devoted adoration that Severus felt his own mind shatter with the awareness that this man was the one thing that he had woken for.

Everything, everything, he'd encountered in this new chance at life that he was now enjoying had come, in one way or another, from this source. Harry Potter had pulled him out from permanent destruction. He'd have perished without the boy's unwanted intrusion inside his mind. He'd have drifted away from a life that he'd been willing to abandon and would have never come to learn that he could feel like this...

“You should get Luc one of those impossibly annoying muggle puzzles. My father used to have that little box that one could never really align into proper colored rows... The Rubik's cube, that's the name of it. It'll drive Luc absolutely crazy with irritation, it'll intrigue him, too. I'd bet he'll be impressed with it, even if he never admits it” He stuttered that advice in a low and obviously nervous tone of voice, feeling suddenly awkward and unsettled. As he pulled his face away from Harry's fingers he could see the boy looking at him with worried puzzlement but he couldn't bring himself to hold that gaze for a single second longer.

The small silence that followed was strained and wary. Harry was looking at him intently and his own eyes remained stubbornly fixed over the dancing flames. His every muscle began to cramp with a kind of expectant rigidity that he couldn't really explain and he had to grit his teeth, in order to force himself to appear relaxed. He felt on edge and over-sensitized to every movement, every blink, every breath the boy dared to take. He felt hyper-aware of both Harry and himself. He felt sickened with tension and desired, more than anything, to get up from the couch and return to his abandoned potion. To lose himself in the absorbing task of pondering which ingredient to add next and in which quantity, in order to improve a recipe that had been already working for centuries...

His mind reeled with the awareness that he longed for the obliviousness of former days. Maybe he'd always been this way. Maybe he'd failed to identify Regulus' crush on him because he'd never really desired to actually see it...

Had he always used his potions work to hide away from the real world? Had he always been this... reluctant to step out, into the disturbingly uncertain arena of interpersonal relationships, and stay the course?... He'd befriended Luc and Cissy. He'd befriended Minnie, Albus... but all of them had soothing, careful personalities that tended to relent before pushing him as hard as Harry liked to do.

He was suddenly vexed with his own lacking courage. With his own never-ending store of weak excuses and his constant, irritating backpedaling. He could not actually understand why Harry bothered to pursue him at all... the poor boy could surely do better than him... Maybe he should just tell the auror to go find somebody else and be done with all of this!. Harry was young and attractive enough to have a reasonable chance of building a life for himself that didn't force him to walk on eggshells around a man as damaged and wary as he, himself, was...

His neck jerked around wildly and his devastated dark eyes settled over the auror. His lips opened to say something, despite the fact that he had no actual idea of what it was exactly that he could possibly say. The boy took one single look at him and jumped to his feet, startling him into backing himself against the backrest of the couch.

A pained sort of breathless silence followed and they looked straight at each other with wide-eyed trepidation. He could tell that Harry was quite flustered. He was anxiously pushing visibly shaking hands through his wild hair while his wide chest expanded with the strain of accommodating the unusually deep breaths that he was taking. After a second or two the gryffindor's hand lowered towards a jeans covered hip. Tanned fingers curled, almost reflexively, into a white-knuckled fist that betrayed a great tension and those eyes, bright green and fierce, pinned him to the spot with nothing but the power of the emotions they reflected.

“Whatever it is that's crossing your mind right now, I want you to leave it unvoiced until tomorrow, Severus. I don't know what I said to spook you this badly, but... I rather not listen to any of your little nuggets of self-deprecating despair. We both need out of this place, I think. We need to do something that can distract you from all those little voices that are screaming warnings in your mind against the idea of us getting any closer. We need to settle your nerves, somehow, and try to just... survive... this second, OK?”

He was so shocked by the fact that the boy had actually read him like a book that he blinked with dazed astonishment.

“I... yes. Yes. I... I need your help, Harry. I'm... I don't know what's wrong with me!”

His harshly voiced admission shattered the tension with which his companion was holding himself upright and Harry ended up taking a single step back, towards the sofa, and falling heavily to his knees right in front of him. That young, pale face looked straight into his own as the boy's hands curled tenderly around his fingers.

“You are panicking, Severus. You are over-thinking everything, as usual, and worrying past all sanity about things that aren't probably worth it. You are scaring me to death with these stunts!.

I... I don't honestly know what it'll take for you to finally get that I'm not leaving. I don't want a dream version of you. I don't want a better, younger, kinder, cuter what's-his-name to take your place, either, so... you can start forgetting the suggestion that I might as well walk out and find myself somebody else!.

You've accepted my kisses now. You've accepted far more from me than I ever thought you would. You've given me the kind of hope that I refuse to abandon and that means that you'll just have to learn to ignore whatever doubts are trying to settle in your mind, because they are all stupid and unnecessary, anyway. Do you understand me?”

His hands held onto the child's with almost compulsive need. His eyes shone ebony bright with a thankful sort of acceptance and he swallowed his every misgiving with a mighty effort of will.

“I don't think I deserve you, Harry...”

“Ssshhss... Ssshhss!. I can't bear to hear you tell me that!”

“But... it's true. Don't you see?. Look at how much being with me hurts you... I move forwards and then backwards, like a crazed, backpedaling coward, and the only one who suffers here is you!. I... I...”

Blunt-tipped fingers pressed against his lips firmly, stilling the flow of his words mid-rant. He became lost in the enraged fierceness that was flashing emerald warnings from the depths of those bespectacled eyes.

“It's too soon... that's all, Severus!. Christmas has come too soon for you to cope with the added expectations of the holiday, and it hasn't helped any that I've been... overenthusiastic... about it.

I'm sorry that I've been pushing you. I really am. I'm even more sorry that you are stressing yourself over what you see as your own faults, when they are actually mine!.

It's not your problem that I've waited four long years for this moment... You aren't responsible for the fact that I've built a million dreams about a life that you never actually agreed to share with me. You need to give yourself some time. You need to think less about me and more about your own wishes, your own wants.

You need to behave not like the man you think I deserve, but like the man you truly are!. Your courage isn't measured by how fast you go from kissing me in your office to appearing by my side at the Weasley's table, Severus. Your courage is measured in smaller, far more difficult things. It's measured by the fact that you are still here, in this room, sitting on this couch and listening to me. It's measured in the way you hold on to my hands. In the fact that, although you are clearly ambivalent about letting me take charge, you are still doing it...”

“Following your lead when it comes to us isn't brave of me at all, Harry. That's plain survival instinct, don't you see? I know that you are far better in this area than I have ever been”

The boy's smile softened with tenderness and one of the hands that had held onto his own so tightly rose to tangle with his hair.

“Why don't we agree to disagree on this, my love? I'm afraid we'll never see eye to eye otherwise”

He forced himself to relax visibly. Taking a single deep breath, to give himself some strength, he lifted his own hand and settled it, almost timidly, on Harry's own head. Soft tufts of the boy's thick hair tickled his fingers, as he buried them in the unexpectedly silky softness that they encountered, and he felt his barely-hidden tension dissolve into a contented sense of achievement when the boy became, literally, paralyzed with obvious surprise. Harry's green eyes widened impossibly and a soft, pinkish flush tainted his cheeks as he gasped and submitted to his hesitant caress with obvious relish.

“Please... don't stop, Severus. I'll kneel right here, before you, for the rest of eternity, I promise you!. Just... don't stop touching me like this.”

He smiled then, amused by the dramatic eagerness the child could so easily display.

“That might end up killing us both with hunger, don't you think?. I thought you had somewhere else to be this evening, anyway...”

Harry's groan was a wonderful balm for his own restless and unfocused fears, managing to relax him even further.

“I can always fire-call Molly and tell her I'm too busy. I've been to dinner at the burrow four times this week already and I've got to show up tomorrow for Bill's welcome-home bash, anyway. Would it be too much for you if I stay a little longer, Severus? We could share whatever food the elves bring you. We could eat right here, by the fireplace... I promise I'll behave, I won't make uncomfortable avowals of devotion or any other insinuations about our future together. That's what did it, wasn't it? When I said we'll have next Christmas to look forward to?”

His hand halted mid-stroke and Harry's face lifted. They stared at one another in the increasingly thick silence while his eyes widened with dazed self-awareness and the boy waited for a response.

“I don't think you understand how the patience that you show me manages to humble me every single time, Harry. I keep waiting for it all to run dry, but you... you seem to be... forbearing... beyond all logic. I don't want to make you a promise that I can't keep. I don't want to allow myself to hurt you any further than I already am. I believe that you and I are a work in progress... A work with a fifty-fifty chance of success.

I wish I could erase my fears and respond to you the way you want me to, but I... I think you are right. It is too soon...

Dinner by the fireplace sounds fine and yes, I'll be grateful if we talk only on terms of today or tomorrow. Maybe even next week might be acceptable, but I don't want to think about next year or the one after that. Not yet. I want to live in this second for a while. I want to enjoy this evening, without having to feel worried about where you are expecting it all to end. That's not too much to ask, is it?”

The boy flexed his lower limbs carefully, bringing his whole body upwards and forwards very slowly, until their faces stood a mere breath apart. There was a tender smile in those lips that flashed unvoiced reassurances straight into his heart. His face was held then very gently, warm fingers cupped the pale skin of his cheeks and the soft-voiced whisper that answered his question brushed against his drying lips like the mind-numbing enchantment of an ancient Fire Fae.

“Anything you ask, Severus. I will give you anything and everything you need...”

He had no time to respond before the boy closed the barely-there distance that still separated them and joined their mouths in a kiss that seemed to be overflowing with serenity. His lips trembled before they opened to the child's welcome invasion and his shoulders were then seized, very carefully, in order to bring his head down ever so slightly. The kiss deepened slowly, so slowly... like a spark that's nursed skilfully into a blaze. His mind spun round and round. His senses reeled. His body shook in instinctive reaction to every overwhelming sensation that assaulted it.

Harry held him through it all. Tethered him back to reality and straight into the safety of his strong arms. He felt cherished and at peace. He felt bold, courageous, worthy... the kiss ended with them both breathing in each other's exhalations of warm air and it felt as if the world held only them.

The office was quiet and the fire shone brightly in the hearth, painting them both with gold and dark gray shadows. Outside the winter wind raged across the grounds of Hogwarts, but right here they were both warm and protected. They were home. Their eyes locked and their hands entwined of their own accord. He pulled on the boy's digits firmly, forcing the auror to first raise and then sit beside him once again.

“I don't like to see you kneeling, Harry”

He explained when the auror looked at him askance and didn't quite know how to answer when the little brat dared to chuckle softly under his breath and then proceeded to shock him right out of his mind when he whispered roughly, fervently:

“I only ever kneel for you, Severus. Only for you... No one else has ever managed to make me feel as weakened, as humble, as you can make me feel. No one else has ever managed to make me feel as strong, either...”

TBC...

 

Ch34

Ch36