Courting Disaster. Chapter 4.
Oct. 1st, 2013 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pekelekeTitle: Courting Disaster.
Rating : Probably NC-17 by the time its done.
Author: pekeleke
Word Count: 2166
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Don't own these characters. No money is being made out of this work.
A/N: This will be a multi-chaptered fic. It is at the moment a WIP.
Summary: For once in his life Harry Potter has a plan. A carefully plotted plan to help him conquer the heart of an extremely reluctant Severus Snape, only... conquering a suspicious ex-spy isn't for the fainthearted and soon Harry finds himself -quite literally- courting disaster.
Courting Disaster.
Harry fidgets in the richly upholstered chair and sighs explosively, feeling more than a little frustrated with his inability to sway Draco away from his adamant refusal to confide the exact location of Severus' home to him. They have been locked in the blond's office for the best part of an hour, arguing back and forth without ever reaching any sort of mutually satisfactory agreement.
His tea went cold a long time ago and he's ravenously hungry, but he's also churlishly refusing to touch the mouthwatering array of small sandwiches that one of the house-elves placed on a small serving table before leaving them alone. Despite his current level of resentment Harry had always assumed that his former schoolyard-rival was going to react exactly like this. He'd have done the same thing if he'd been in the other man's shoes, after all.
He had actually anticipated Severus' frosty displeasure. He'd even predicted with frightening accuracy how completely the man would shun him in an effort to give himself enough time to retreat right back inside his tattered armor. He'd been expecting Severus' refusal to remain in his flat and talk things out like any less haunted man may have done, and he had even gone as far as planning exactly how to deal with that situation, only...
His painstakingly devised plan has been a failure. He miscalculated the strength of Severus' attachment to his carefully selected second lure and he just can't reconcile himself to the knowledge of how wrong he's been about this, of how woefully inaccurate his knowledge of Severus' personality has proven itself to be. He can't believe how horribly mistaken he's been about the one assumption that he'd considered to have been pretty much carved in stone. He'd expected Severus to descend knocking on his door within hours of abandoning his bedroom and now here he is an entire week later, still waiting for a visit that the man is very clearly never going to make.
The abject failure of his perfectly devised plot has forced him at long last to gather his shredded dignity about himself and come here in search of the kind of help he knows he'll never receive willingly. Not from this source at least. Not if he fails to convince this life-hardened version of the wimpy child he used to hate of the fact that his intentions towards Severus are nothing short of... pristine.
He is desperate by now and he knows it very well. He also has the uncomfortable suspicion that his host can sense the weakness of his position from a mile away. He needs help and there is no one else on earth who can possibly grant it to him when it comes to Severus Snape, so he swallows down a scream of sheer frustration and remains stiffly seated in his outrageously ornate chair, manfully enduring the challenge in Malfoy's flinty gaze as best as he can while attempting to ignore the thought that everything would be a hell of a lot easier if only Draco's loyalty to his godfather was a tiny bit weaker. If it wasn't going to end up forcing him to hunt Severus down in a far more public setting.
“I swear to you that I'm not going to harm him, Malfoy. He left some stuff behind in my apartment and I want to return his things. That isn't so bloody threatening, is it?”
“I can return them for you. Or you could owl them to him. Severus is a very private man who dislikes personal visits. I see no reason for you to go all the way to his place in order to return these misplaced items yourself.”
“I want to deliver them in person. I need to see him and make sure he's alright. I want to talk to him, for Godric's sake!” He explains one more time, praying to Merlin for the other man to relent enough to help him. He's desperately trying to avoid paying a visit to Severus' potions lab and ending up being forced to drag the man into the kind of public confrontation that he is so clearly shying away from.
Draco's pale lips compress into a thin line.
“He doesn't want to talk to you, Potter. It's rather tactless of you to pursue him so insistently. Severus is ashamed of what happened between the two of you and is actively attempting to forget it. I realize that he will have to face you at some point in the future, but he doesn't want to do it right now and I'm not going to help you force him into doing it before he is ready.”
“Are you even aware that I'm in love with him?”
Draco's harsh expression softens ever so slightly. His gray eyes fill with unbearable pity and his response is both quiet and excruciatingly gentle. Soft like a butterfly's wings. Wounding with its heartfelt sympathy:
“He doesn't believe you.”
Despite knowing that already, hearing the truth hurts Harry to the bone. He flinches visibly in his chair, shrinking against the richly upholstered backrest like a weak and frightened creature, but his gaze remains steadily focused on his host's pale gray eyes through sheer determination to win the man's favor:
“He told me as much the last time I saw him, Draco. But he is wrong about this. He's wrong about me and about what I want from him. He's so very wrong. I swear to you that I'm not going to hurt him. I could never, ever, hurt him.”
“You've already hurt him, Harry. He was content enough with his life. Maybe he wasn't blissfully happy, but he was reasonably satisfied with his lot. He'd just started to put the horror of the war finally behind him when you decided to play Casanova and ended up messing him up again.”
“I'm not playing with him, Malfoy. I'm not going to let the two of you push me into the role of heartless Don Juan, just to soothe the guilty sting of Severus' conscience while he tries to cast me off. I'm in love with that stubborn idiot and I need you to help me get hold of him so that I can convince him of my...”
“This has brought it all back, Potter. All Severus can remember whenever he thinks about you now are the tricks your awful father and his idiotic sidekicks used to play on him year after year while he was growing up. He's gone back to the memory of the decades he spent fulfilling the role of the most despised professor in the history of Hogwarts. He's gone back to remembering everyone's mocking descriptions of him as an undesirable traitor.
"My godfather is a cripplingly insecure man and you've just gone ahead and thrown him right back into the kind of dark memories that he's been trying so hard to forget. He is so ashamed of himself that right now he's convinced that you are trying to make him pay for his past actions. He is driving himself crazy waiting for the Prophet's article where you finally tell all about your awful night with a Death Eater.”
“That's never going to happen. Never!”
Draco smiles at him briefly but his gaze is as flinty as Harry has ever seen it, and he's shaking his blond head from left to right with crystal-clear frustration.
“Do you think I don't know that? I'd bet even Severus himself knows it, deep down. You've never been the kind of man who kisses and tells, Potter. You've never been the kind of man who fucks around, either. That's why he is so frightened right now. I think he suspects that you are telling him the truth. I believe he's realized it, but can't bring himself to accept it. He can't cope with the idea of allowing himself to fall for you and end up having to confront everyone's outraged reaction to the possibility of the two of you ever becoming a couple.
“He is a lot older than you are and rather unpopular. He's at best a forgettable recluse and at worst a social pariah, whereas you... You are the bloody Boy-Who-Lived, for Merlin's sake! The entire world is going to despise whoever you end up with and that hatred will be all the more vicious once the public finds out that the man of your choice is none other than Severus Snape: infamous professor, traitorous Death Eater spy and the acknowledged murderer of Albus Dumbledore himself.”
“There is nothing I can do about any of that, Draco. Public opinion is a very fickle thing. They may hate him for a while, but it won't last. I realize that Severus would probably feel relieved if I turn out to be a vengeful scumbag instead of a genuine suitor, but that's just not the case. I genuinely, honestly, love him. He doesn't have a single reason to be ashamed of what happened between us. I'm the one who took advantage of him. I knew that he was lonely and ready to settle for something that was never going to come near the same orbit of the thing he wanted the most. I made him an offer I knew full well he wasn't going to be able to refuse. Not on that particular night and definitely not while he was drunk. I even encouraged him to drink more, after his initial refusal to come home with me, knowing that the lower his defensive shields became, the more chances I had of having him eventually surrender to his own deepest desires.”
“This is really none of my business, Potter.”
“No, it's not. But you are the only connection to him that I have right now and he trusts you. I trust you. You've got to listen to me, Malfoy. I used my knowledge of Severus' nature to lure him away from his first choice of companion and brought him home with me that night. It wasn't a mistake on my part and it wasn't a coincidence, either.”
“Potter, I honestly don't want to...”
Harry ignores the blond's discomfited protest and continues speaking adamantly, grimly determined to make his ex-rival understand precisely what he is feeling. What he has done. What he is so desperately attempting to achieve:
“Listen to me, please. I attended an international Quidditch conference last year. I was reading the Prophet one morning when one of the french players spotted the picture of Severus they published the day he won that potions award for his improvements to the formula of the Dreamless Sleep.
“The guy gaped at the photo and snatched the paper right out of my hand to read the article, then he asked me if the person in the picture was really the infamous Severus Snape. When I confirmed the information he started chuckling to himself and told me there and then how he had sex with Severus a few years earlier, after meeting him at The Unfettered Queer one night, back in the days when he'd been The Manchester Bullfrog's reserve beater. Best shag of his life, he called him, and I... I've never been more infuriated with someone in all my life. I've never been more grateful to someone I so deeply resented, either.”
“Stop that, Potter, for heaven's sake! I don't want to hear any of this and nothing you say now will sway me from my position on this matter, anyway.”
“I was already desperately in love with Severus back then, but I thought he was straight, Malfoy. I spent years pining for a man I was convinced I could not have. Do you have any idea of how relieved I felt when I finally realized that Severus is like me? I'm not going to stop pursuing him until he gives me a proper chance to show him how truly wonderful our future could become, if only he dares to put a single shred of his faith in me. I'm not going to give up. I can't! You've got to understand me, Draco, please... Turning my back on my feelings without even daring to put up the fight of my life just to earn my chance at being allowed to woo him properly will be the death of me.”
“Then I wish you good luck. I genuinely do, Potter. And I'm more sorry than you shall ever know about having to tell you that I'm not going to help you. I wish I could, but I can't. I'm Severus' secret keeper because he trusts me with both his life and his safety and I'd cut off my own tongue and burn it with Fiendfyre before betraying that trust. Do you understand me? If you want my godfather's home address you'll have to get him to disclose it to you personally, because I most certainly won't do it. I'm sorry.”
( Chapter 3 )
( Chapter 5. )
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-02 01:01 am (UTC)And Harry - he's going to have to barge in on Severus somehow. Time to prove himself. sigh.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-02 03:37 pm (UTC)Thanks, as always, for taking the time to both read and review, my friend. Your lovely comment meant the world to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-02 11:07 am (UTC)It's good that Draco cares about Severus and doesn't want to betray his trust, but if knows that Harry really loves Severus he could help him, just a little bit.
But I'm pretty sure that Harry will think about something. He is very determinate, isn't he?
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-02 03:46 pm (UTC)It's true that Draco could have found a sneaky way to stick up for Severus while still helping Harry, but I think the most important thing for him right now is to retain Severus' trust, no matter what, and I doubt he's willing to risk that for Harry so early on in the game. He might do so one day, but not right now. Harry will have to prove the strength of his commitment to both Slytherins first, won't he?
Of Course he's going to find another way to reach Severus. He is determined, he is in love and he is the daring Boy-Who-Lived, himself... I'd say Severus should enjoy his last days of peace because they are about to end, aren't they? ;D
Thanks so much for keeping up with this story, myk. Your truly insightful comment was a joy to read. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-04 10:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-05 03:15 am (UTC)Thanks, as always, for taking the time to both read and review this story. Your lovely comment was greatly appreciated, ada. :)