Courting Disaster. Chapter 5.

[pekeleke]

Title: Courting Disaster. Ch 5.

Rating : Probably NC-17 by the time its done.

Author: pekeleke

Word Count: 2931

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.

Severus hears the doorbell ring frantically in the front room of his shop and frowns into his cauldron.  Although his laboratory is located on the far corner of Diagon Alley it isn't an actual apothecary.  He'd refused to tie himself to any given contract upon his return to the United Kingdom, rejecting every single offer of employment he'd received no matter how lucrative it may have appeared to be on the surface.  He'd been tired of toiling for the benefit of others, exhausted of following orders and absolutely determined to avoid falling into the trap of complying with agendas that weren't his own and didn't particularly interest him, so he'd balked at the very idea of subjecting himself to any sort of subservience, no matter how indirect.

He'd opted for opening his own independent lab instead and now accepts to work for others on a freelance basis, as long as the job requested intrigues him in some way.  In addition to that he brews and sells his own brand of regular use and medicinal potions to a select number of high-end apothecaries and conducts all manner of research projects in his own terms.  He often spends his days safely ensconced in his lab for hours on end without ever setting eyes on another person.  All of his business dealings are carried out by owl and he has never so far had to deal with the distressing experience of trying to please actual customers, since he doesn't keep a stock of ready-to-buy potions in his shelves.

He sighs, rubbing his slightly pounding temples soothingly even as he casts the stasis spell that will keep his current experiment from being thoroughly ruined while he goes upstairs in search of the clueless tourist who must have mistakenly entered his establishment assuming it to be an actual apothecary.  Spotting a casually attired man on the far corner of his front room Severus walks forwards briskly, beginning to speak out loud even as he focuses distractedly on the task of charming his hands free from any ingredient residue left over by his brewing, in preparation to making the cup of tea that he has now decided to fix for himself before returning to work.

“I'm sorry for your trouble, Sir, but I'm afraid that we don't carry ready-made potions in this particular establishment.”

“I know that, Severus.”

His steps falter as that thoroughly unmistakable voice reaches his ears.  His fingers curl instinctively around the comfortingly familiar handle of his wand and he feels as if his lungs have lost all air.  His head shoots up, forcing his widened eyes into unwelcome collision with a determined-looking green glare and time itself appears to slow down before freezing.  Keeping them both motionless and speechless in the growing silence.

“Potter... What are you doing here?”

The Gryffindor huffs impatiently, apparently deeply offended by what Severus himself thinks is a very reasonable question.
“What else did you expect me to do?  I wanted to see you, Severus.  I've been trying to set up a more convenient time and place for us to talk, but you haven't bothered to answer a single one of the owls I've sent you.”

“I'd have thought that my failure to do so would have conveyed my desire to be left alone clearly enough.”

“No amount of hiding your head in the sand is going to take this away.  We.  Made.  Love.  There's no reason to be ashamed of it.  I enjoyed myself immensely and so did you.  It was one of the most glorious experiences of my life and I'll be damned before I let you treat it like some sort of ghastly little mistake.  I've already told you that I have feelings for you.  Feelings that I'd like to have the chance to explore further.”

“And I've already told you that I don't believe that ridiculous claim, Potter.  Tell me what you really want from me in order to keep quiet and I may be inclined to negotiate some sort of mutually beneficial terms with you.”

“I'm not going to sell you out, Severus!  This is my private life too, you know?  I realize you aren't all that willing to trust me right now, but just think about it for a second, OK?  There's no reason whatsoever for you to be behaving as if I'm the one who's out to get you when you are the one who has all the power in this relationship.”

“We.  Don't.  Have.  A.  Relationship!”  Severus utters those incensed five words in a clearly annoyed hiss and the ex-Gryffindor becomes instantly still, seeming to be reacting instinctively to his raising temper.

“Of course we do.  No matter how much you try to deny it the truth is that I.  Am.  In.  Love. With.  You, so...”

“No.  You are not.  You can't be.  You are only saying that because you...”

“Yes?”

“I don't know!  It doesn't make a lick of sense to me.  What the hell are you playing at, Potter?  What do you want from me?”

“Everything.  I want everything from you.  I want you to give me a chance to court you.  A real chance, Severus, not this painful self-protective brush off that you are so determined to deliver right now.”

Severus' breath catches as that statement falls into the silence that surrounds them like the gauntlet of an ancient, reckless knight.  His dark gaze widens to capacity and he stares with unblinking dismay straight into the determined emerald orbs that are looking right back at him with equal amounts of challenge and a fierce, crystal-clear longing.
“I have nothing to give you.  I have nothing left to give to anyone.  I was stripped bare of anything of value that I may have had even the slightest chance of offering to another human being a long time ago, Potter.”

That young face softens with unmistakable tenderness and the seeker's intense emerald eyes shimmer in the dimness of the room as they gaze upon him intently, pinning him to the spot with the force of the powerful emotion that has begun to swirl within their depths.
“I've seen you with Draco.  I've seen the way you handle both your potions and your books.  I've seen the way you look at Hogwarts whenever you go back and how your trembling fingertips keep on tracing the carving of Dumbledore's coat of arms every time you visit his grave.  You have always known love.  You are capable of loving people, things, places and even memories with all your heart, Severus. I've seen it with my own eyes.  You are so full of things to give that I'm surprised you haven't lost your sanity yet.  Keeping such emotional intensity locked in so tightly all the bloody time can't be good for anyone.”

“Potter...”

“It's OK.  I realize I'm making you uncomfortable.  I know you aren't precisely used to talking about emotions so openly and I'm perfectly willing to leave this conversation for another time, Severus.  There's no need for you to panic right now.  All I want to do is..."

"I couldn't possibly care any less about what you want. You can't walk into my shop and expect me to take your attempts to blackmail me lying down.  If you think that being the goddamned Savior of the Wizarding World gives you the right to bully me right into humiliation you've got a very different lesson coming your way.  I may be pitiful, but I'm not powerless.  I will fight you tooth and nail, and you will most definitely never obtain whatever petty satisfaction you are currently seeking."

Potter takes an irritatingly deep gulp of air, looking for all intents and purposes like one of those annoyingly pious muggle martyrs who spent their entire lives doggedly reciting their perfect little nugget of golden wisdom to a mass of growling jungle savages in the hopes of helping them 'see' the light.
"I don't want to humiliate you, Severus.  I'm not here to blackmail you into doing anything you don't want to do, either.  I just—You left your vest and one of your socks at my place, OK?  You were in such a rush to leave that morning that I don't think your Accio spell was as focused as it should have been and I wanted to make sure you got your things back.  Why don't you come over and collect them, say this afternoon around four?  We can have a cup of tea together and talk for a little while, get to know each better.”

Severus frowns, instinctively wary of trusting both the apparently harmless invitation and the idea that his Accio spell may have failed.  He's cast it plenty of times in the same or even more nerve-wracking situations and it has never failed to work perfectly.
“You must have shielded those items from my charm-work.  Why should I even bother trying to collect them now?  What else have you cast on them?  I'm not stupid enough to accept those things back without checking them for hexes, Potter.  You won't be able to hide whatever you did for long, so..."

Potter simply laughs and the sound is so heartbroken, so thoroughly mirthless, that Severus flinches away, taking a single step back in order to put much necessary distance between himself and this ashen-faced version of the famous Boy-Who-Lived.
"I freely admit that I charmed them against your Accio spell, Severus.  But I didn't do it to have the chance to cast something nefarious upon you.  I kept them with me so that I could do this. I planned to use them to give you a safe enough excuse to come back to my apartment.  I wanted to try and draw you in, offer you a chance to let me ease your fears about what will happen now that we've finally been... intimate.  I wanted to give you the chance to realize that I can reassure you.  I can soothe your current anxiety about all of this.  I can tell you to your face precisely what I'm going to do now and what I'm expecting to achieve with my actions.  The only thing you have to do is find the courage to be alone with me so soon after what happened.”

“You can't goad me into going back to your place, Potter.  I don't have to prove myself to you.  I'm not a bloody teenager, you know?  You can keep my fucking sock under your blasted pillow and hug it every night for the rest of your life for all I care!”

The brat smiles tightly at him while those steadily darkening green eyes study him thoughtfully in the tense silence that follows.  One second slowly fades away, turning inexorably into the next as it follows the soothing rhythm set forth by the grandfather clock that stands just beside the rarely used till.
“You may have no compunctions about abandoning a measly sock as a casualty of our skirmish, but can you say the same thing about that particular vest, Severus?  I know it was a present from Albus. The last gift he ever gave you, wasn't it?  There is a personalized inscription on the label and I know you wear it every single year on your birthday.  You also wear it on Christmas and New year.  You wore it on the day you won your potions award and when they finally gave you your Order Of Merlin, First Class.  You even wore it to Draco's wedding, didn't you?  That faint silver pattern on the lapel is pretty much unmistakable.  I've never seen anything like it.”

“Runes.  That pattern is the echo left behind by the protective runes Albus wove into the cloth before he gave it to me.  That vest is unique in all the world.  It's the only one of its kind that Albus ever bothered to charm and I'm ridiculously fond of it.  I swear I'll kill you with my bare hands if you've damaged it on purpose, Potter!”

The seeker appears to be more relieved than upset upon being threatened and Severus frowns uneasily, too puzzled by the brat's inexplicable attitude to be able to ignore it with any degree of success.  Potter goes as far as to smile from ear to ear, looking for all intents and purposes like a thoroughly delighted cat who has just feasted on a double ration of cream and each and every one of Severus' internal alarms starts blaring ominous warnings in the privacy of his mind.

“I wasn't so far off after all.  You do care about that vest.  I've done nothing to it, I swear.  I've kept it safe for you, Severus.  I planned to give it back from the beginning, only—you failed to barge back into my flat as soon as you realized it was gone.  I still don't understand why you did that.  I was expecting you to confront me about it's disappearance at the very least.”

Severus' anger dissolves like an ice-cube left in the sun there and then.  His cheeks acquire the delicate tint of a thoroughly embarrassed blush and his gaze lowers uncomfortably towards the floor even as his shoulders square, unconsciously straightening his lanky body to its intimidating full length in order to allow him to achieve the forbidding rigidity of a marble statue.  He's thus pushed right back inside the skin of his former persona, back to being the despised Severus Snape of former years.  Back to hiding in plain sight, locked by his own self-protective instincts inside the unyielding constraints of his old, battered armor even though the war ended long ago and he has learned to loath the character he was forced to play for Albus' goddamned "Greater Good" with a fierce passion.

"Severus?  Are you alright?  Your face has gone as blank as the empty page of a diary.  I can't read you any longer.  You look like..."

"Myself.  I look like the man who taught you potions for five interminably long years, Potter.  I look precisely like the Severus Snape you've always known.“

“No.  This isn't you at all.  This is what's left of that awful mask you used to wear all the damned time.  You've got to leave it behind.  I'm not threatening you in any way and you bloody well know it!”

“Who the hell do you think you are?  You don't get to tell me what to do about anything!  I'll behave in any way I want to and if you don't like what you see you're more than welcome to get right back to your charming little life, and leave me in peace to live my own as I see fit.  Go on, walk out the fucking door and do not bother to return.  I'm tired of your constant pushing, Potter.  You're never going to get anything out of me by trying to force me into it."

"I'm not trying to force you into anything, for Merlin's sake!  I'm just trying to have a fucking conversation with you."

"Well, I don't want to have a 'fucking conversation' with you.  I don't want to see you or listen to you.  I don't even want to be in the same room as you are.  I've gone as far as to ignore every single missive of yours demanding further contact and yet here you are: you've barreled into my shop and demanded we talk about an extremely personal mistake I made while I was blind drunk.  A mistake I'd rather forget, by the way.  You are forcing me to stand here and look at you, listen to your ramblings, breathe the same air you are breathing despite my obvious lack of desire to do so.  How can you even claim with a straight face that you're not trying to force me into doing anything I don't want to do?  I want you to disappear from my sight, do you hear me?  I want you to leave me alone, Potter.  I want you to show me the kind of respect that I most certainly deserve and listen to me when I tell you to get the hell out of my shop!"

Potter's face becomes ferocious in the blink of an eye.  His skin loses all color, allowing the otherworldly brightness of his angry emerald eyes to become the unavoidable feature that defines his young face:
“Fine!  If you want me to leave you alone so badly then I most certainly will.  I'm half tempted to let you find out exactly how bloody empty you are going to feel once you get precisely what you claim so hard to desire.  Sometimes the frightened whispers of our mind become the voice of our worst enemy, Severus.  I spent entire years of my life so desperately hell bent on becoming a real Weasley that I dragged the entire family through the most heartbreaking misery.

"I know everything there is to know about hiding behind the soothing mask of the man we either want the world to think we are or honestly believe we should become.  You won't be able to keep on living that kind of lie forever.  Trying to be who you aren't will eventually destroy you and everything that you love along the way.  It will wound everyone you care for and everyone who cares for you in return.  It will leave you empty inside, wounded beyond salvation.  It will eat away the loving soul that makes you so breathtakingly beautiful, Severus.  It will destroy the part of you that makes you... you.”
 

( Chapter 4 )

( Chapter 6. )

 

Comments

[myk_myk]

I knew that Harry would go to Severus' lab, I just knew it! Thanks Merlin that he is so stubborn, you are very lucky, Severus (and very blind!).
This conversation was so heartbreaking, Severus said a very hurtful words, but I understand why he did it. I hope that Harry understands it too.

[pekeleke]

Hello there. myk! ;D

I'm thrilled that you guessed that Harry was going to go bother Sev in his lab. It's true that this conversation was extremely difficult for the both of them. Severus said very hurtful things and Harry almost allowed himself to be pushed away... Thank Merlin for stubborn gryffindors, though! ;D

Thanks, as always, for taking the time to both read and review another chapter of this story. I love your new icon, btw. Where is it from?

Hugs
pekeleke

[myk_myk]

Thank you! ^^
It's Marceline the Vampire Queen, my favorite character from "Adventure Time" (you can watch it on Cartoon Network)

[soleo]

He's so stubborn, Severus that is. Does he like how alone he is? That he only ever ventures out for the comfort of another on his birthday and has to get blind drunk to do so? That's just sad Sev! Draco isn't enough human comfort.
If he only knew that peace that being with a lover brings instead of expecting pain at every turn.

[pekeleke]

True. Severus has been extremely stubborn so far. I don't think he particularly enjoys his loneliness, but I believe that he's grown to associate it with emotional safety. Hopefully he'll learn to trust Harry enough to find out precisely how wonderful it feels to have someone who really cares for him by his side.

Thanks, as always, for keeping up with this story and encouraging me to continue writing it through your lovely reviews, my friend. :)

[orlando_switch.livejournal.com]

I must admit I feel a bit unsettled by this Harry. He is so focused on Severus that for me it borders on stalking.
IMO Severus is absolutely right that they don't have a relation just because they had sex and the fact that Harry is in love with him doesn't make it a relationship. It even doesn't matter if Severus really is hiding behind a mask or not. For me it's evident that Harry as depicted here does not respect his wishes nor his privacy and both wants to fix him and wants a relationship with him which Severus obviously doesn't want.

So kudos for the realistic way you have written Harry's obsession over Snape, but at the same time, I don't find it a healthy base for whatever kind of contact between them.

[pekeleke]

Hummm... You are not the first person to have issues with both my characterization of Harry and his actions so far. I'm glad that you are able to empathize so well with Severus' point of view in this story, but since that point of view is going to end up being dismantled one step at a time by Harry's constant pushing, I honestly can't imagine you ever growing to enjoy this particular fic.

I'm not trying to downplay your opinion or ignoring it in any way, I understand precisely where you are coming from and I value the honesty of your comment. I'm just saying that reading fanfiction is something that we do because we enjoy it and, in that sense, you'll probably be better off not bothering to waste your precious time with this particular story. I do hope that you find something more to your taste out there.

Yours sincerely
pekeleke