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The voice under all silences. Chapter 43.
The voice under all silences. Chapter 43
He stood, utterly still and darkly attired amid the silent gravestones. His lean, unmoving form resembled a tall shadow that contrasted sharply against the bright orange backdrop of the winter sunset. Freezing wind kept trying to topple him but he remained stock still and quiet. He had no intention of allowing himself to leave before he was ready. He'd come to this place to say his piece, now nothing and no one was going to stop him from doing just that. He had to do this. He just... had to!.
He'd been thinking long and hard about this decision and the longer his mind dwelt on it, the more convinced he'd become of the wisdom inherent in this particular course of action. He'd loved her in silence. He'd mourned her in secret. Now he'd say goodbye to her aloud, up front, in a manner more befitting the stronger version of himself that he'd become...
It was All Hallows' Eve and he was here, in the eerily empty cemetery at Godric's Hollow. He'd come to pay a long overdue visit to his lover's dead mother. He'd arrived bearing flowers and a lightened heart that was, at last, willing to let go of the bitterness that her death had once inspired within him.
'In loving memory of James and Lily Potter.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death...'
He read the inscription aloud, wondering what Harry thought of it. He'd been the Master of Death itself at one point in his life. The boy could have brought his parents back so easily... yet he'd been wise enough, even at such young age, to understand that dead things belonged only in memories. They could never be returned to former life, at least not in the exact way they had been before they'd abandoned it. The world beyond the veil would change a soul forever. Things that managed to return from such places brought with them the eternal sorrow of seeing only a husk, a hollowed copy of the warmer, living soul they once had held.
He'd never asked himself what he'd have done that night if the resurrection stone had actually been in his possession. He'd been so hurt and so... desperate. He'd loved her for so long, without any respite, and he wasn't actually certain if he'd have had the strength to heed the warnings of the old stories. Would he have tried to bring her back? He wasn't certain. And he trembled in reaction to the possibility. Fate, no matter how painful it'd felt at the time, had intervened in his favor during the final battle. It had deprived him of the chance to commit an outright crime against both himself and her. Against Harry... She belonged here. Under this marble-carved gravestone. Held forever in peaceful rest beside the man she'd chosen.
The grave seemed to glow with pearled-tainted elegance in the rapidly shifting sunset light. It looked clean, dust free and tenderly cared for. He smiled with the thought that it had an air of peacefulness.
Gloved hands set a carefully selected bunch of fragile looking white roses on the headstone that protected her old bones. She'd been dead for such a long time that he'd lived longer with the sorrow of having lost her than he'd ever lived with the joy she used to bring him.
Ignoring the dismal wetness of the soft grass by her grave he knelt before it. Dark head bowed in respect. Eyes shining with the first tears he'd ever cried for her that felt clean and pure. He was willing to forgive her. Willing to forget her. He had come here to put her ghost to rest, at long last. But he had something to tell her first, something that couldn't be left unsaid. Something that her spirit might come to be close enough to hear in this particular night.
“Love is the voice under all silences... Did you know that I once told Luc that I loved you strongly enough to have no need for acknowledgment or reciprocation?. I believed myself to be unworthy enough to deserve only silence. I didn't understand that loving in such a way doesn't make anyone stronger or even more deserving. It just... weakens you. It traps you. It keeps you forever a prisoner of a passion that was never meant for you...
I dwell no longer in silence, Lily Potter. I've discovered that I can dare to love someone out loud and expect to be equally loved in return. I belong out in the open now. I'm a creature who has abandoned his dark corners and has learned to thrive in the sunlight.
I was changed by a man who loves me like you couldn't, you know?. I was saved by someone who taught me that I... I was never as unworthy as I believed myself to be. It wasn't easy, Lily. We were engaged in a bloody battle of wills that he'd won through sheer stubbornness.
I had to learn to trust in him, you know? I had to be dragged into faith, like a lost child. I'm no longer the same boy you went to school with. I have changed for the better. I have fought two wars and won. I have survived, despite my every wrong choice. I have conquered most of my fears and I have come here to humbly tell you that I... I'm in love with your son. I have been in love with him for a while now, Lily.”
His words halted for a second and his onyx eyes lifted enough to become fixed on her name. A bright smile curved his lips then, and his whole expression became alive with a bright hope. His black gaze softened with affection and he became a darkly attired rendition of the kind of vibrant joy that could neither be hidden nor denied. His long fingers closed around the small square box that he'd been carrying inside the most secure pocket his austere winter robes and he extracted the item slowly, bringing it reverently out into the rapidly fading light, and holding it very gently before her gravestone as if in offering.
“I have told him how I feel, of course. I've told him, maybe not as many times as he has done, but... plenty enough. We've been together for a little over a year now and, although things haven't been always easy, they have brought us both great happiness, Lily. I believe Harry could live like this forever. I believe he'd be willing to accept what we have now and call himself content. But he... he once told me that he wanted... everything.”
His throat closed at the memory and he became lost in his own thoughts for a long time. His eyes weren't focusing on the darkened cemetery that surrounded him, no. They were lost in the contemplation of the life he'd been leading for a whole year now. His mind had brought him home already, back to his warm and brightly lit rooms at Hogwarts...
Harry had been roped into accompanying a gaggle of Weasley youngsters trick-or-treating and he knew that it'd be hours before the boy came back. Still... the idea that their couch patiently awaited them, the knowledge that their fireplace was already prepared to hold the blaze in front of which they'll cuddle before going to bed, exchanging brief conversation about nothing in particular, filled him with the kind of certainty that he'd never really known before the auror entered his life. His smile became even softer and he faced her white tomb with quiet dignity.
“I believe your son deserves better than to live his life devoting himself to faithful domesticity without being ever granted the opportunity to become more than a lover. That is a title that doesn't truly suit him. It diminishes who he is and what he means to me. It cheapens the both of us. It is unworthy of him...
I also believe that he won't ever take this step. This has always been my call to make. My choice. This is one more example of the freedom he has given me... I can chose. I can decide. I can make my own demands and expect him to at least listen to them all. I want to give him what he deserves, Lily. I must take this last step in order to be free from my own past, from you. I want to live beyond today. I want to embrace a world where I'm brave enough to speak about the future. I want to free myself from you. I've come here, tonight, to leave the man I used to be behind. I'm going to turn my back on you forever, Lily. I'm going to cast you away and allow my heart to be filled by Harry and Harry alone...
I don't want him to remain your son all of his life. I refuse to allow him to exist in a world of loving affection, without having any actual formal claim to his own family. He wants to have it all and, if there's a man alive who deserves to be my everything, then it's got to be him.
I'm going to ask him to marry me, my friend. I hope that, from wherever you are looking down on us, you understand that we love one another and you approve. Of me. For him... Do not fear that I may mistreat him, or ignore him, or attempt to give him anything less than the very best I've got to give. I'll give him my strength and my loyalty. My very heart and soul. I'll give him everything that I am right now and everything that I might ever become...”
As his voice gave life to those lasts sentences the tangled jumble of words that had been twirling and twisting around in his mind, all week long, settled into a space filled with a peaceful sort of emptiness. His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly and he became finally aware that there was nothing left for him to say. He had finally spoken to her and it hadn't been as hard as he'd imagined it would be. He felt suddenly lighter, cleaner, freer. He exhaled deeply, with the air of a man who has come through a dark and frightening tunnel to find himself finally beyond fear. His hand fluttered a little aimlessly in the air before coming to rest, ever so gently, on the stone-cold reality of her tombstone.
“I loved you dearly, Lilly Potter, but now Ive finally found my life beyond you. I hope you bless us with acceptance, my old friend. I hope you embrace your son's own choice with open mindedness. You, who loved him enough to die for him, should have no trouble recognizing another soul willing offer him that very same sacrifice, should it ever be needed...”
He watched quietly as his words seemed to sink into the stone with the very last rays of sunlight and a single, pearl-colored flash of diamond-bright light swept across the white marble like the fragile shimmer of a patronus. He couldn't see her, but felt her here, sitting atop her tombstone right next to him. A sudden touch of bone-freezing cold settled against his pale cheekbone and his eyes closed in pained submission to her touch. Yes. She was here. She had come to hear his words and give him... What? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Reassurance?... He didn't know what she wanted but he was willing to treasure this last second of communion between them.
The instant shattered like stardust and her cold touch vanished almost as swiftly as it had come to freeze his pale skin. A gust of wind ruffled the delicate petals of his offer of flowers and he could have sworn that he felt her wrap her invisible long digits around the box that he still held in his palm.
The first star rose in the shadowy dusk sky and it's light seemed to shine brighter than ever. It lit the grave with otherworldly beauty and he wondered if this was what acceptance truly felt like.
“I'll look after our Harry for you now. He's no longer alone, Lilly” He muttered through the thick knot that had lodged, like a piece of jagged glass, inside his throat. “Farewell, my friend. Farewell...”
He rose then. Towered over her white tombstone for a single heartbeat before turning his head around. A swift wave of his birch wand removed all traces of wet mud out of his ruined robes and then he was ready to go. His boots took that first step away from her with the kind of certainty that spoke of a heart finally freed. He turned away sharply and didn't hesitate for a single second in leaving her behind. He felt saddened to a point, yes, but he felt also elated. He felt stronger and determined and at peace. He was abandoning her finally to her grave and to her choice. To the life that had never truly held a place for him, and to the death that had taken her away so long ago... This had been her fate, but it had never been his. His destiny had always, always, placed him beside Harry.
His feet led him slowly towards the arched entrance to the cemetery, waving idly, in and out, among the silent graves. He was lost in his own thoughts, quietly contemplating his plans for a small dinner over the weekend. He wanted to spend Saturday night in the little cottage that Harry owned in Wales. He wanted to take this final step in front of the same fireplace where he'd committed to the brat for the first time. Back to the place where the bitter man he used to be had finally lost the war that he'd been, so stubbornly, waging against himself and decided to embrace the emotional needs that he'd always denied.
A sudden wave of anxiety rose within him at the enormity of what he was about to do here. Soul-bonded... He was going to offer the boy an unbreakable bond. A promise of eternity. He wasn't going to simply pledge his heart to Harry here and genuinely promise to do his best, no, he was going to offer the kind of thing that not even Artur Weasley had dared to commit to. The influence of Salazar's Shield was going to turn his simple proposition of marriage into something very different altogether. They couldn't have the luxury of being mostly certain, no. They'd have to be beyond all doubt and fear. They'd never have the chance to be simple spouses. No matter what their desires to the contrary might be, the shield would take their rather ordinary pledge and push it a step further. They'd be linked to one another beyond what was formally expected in simple marriage. They'd be joined in heart and soul. They'd never be able to... give up. There'd be no chance of divorce. There'd be nothing else for them but an eternity of togetherness, where no freedom could be had from one another. If their love ever waned... They'd become trapped.
He trembled with the sudden, irrational terror of being rejected and his feet faltered, bringing him to a sudden, shaken stop among the tall gravestones.
He imagined himself presenting his carefully chosen ring to Harry on Saturday. He could see himself kneeling before the boy, like the hope-filled supplicant he was meant to be, could even smell the flowers he'd put on the table and the thick warm wax of the candles that he'd lit. He could picture Harry's surprised expression turning to gentle formality as he looked sadly straight into his own eyes. Could imagine the soft whisper with which the boy would, very gently, inform him of the fact that, although loving him wasn't a problem, a soul-bond was just too much of a commitment. Many men Harry's age would balk at being asked to tie themselves through so irreversible a knot. His eyes darkened with unutterable pain and his breath halted. His frame shook with paralyzing fear and his heart became too heavy to remain confined within the fragile prison of his ribcage. His long fingers clutched the little box with enough strength to turn his knuckles white and an eternity of dark misery seemed to open before his eyes as the scene unfolded, in excruciatingly painful detail, inside his mind.
“No. No. NO!. I'm not going to do this to myself. I'm not doing this to Harry, either. To us!. That man loves me with the kind of love that doesn't give up. That hasn't let me down so far. He waited forever for a chance, just one chance, to be beside me. He put me back together and opened his whole world to me: his friends, his family, the whole of wizarding society... he is not going to reject me in any way. He was ready for eternity long before I even woke, for Salazar's sake!. I know that he won't balk at the Soul-bond. I know it!. Why am I still doing this to myself?...
I'm done with loving in silence and having no faith in hope. I've got no need for that. Not any longer. I have certainty and acceptance and security, now. I've found my shelter and I'm not going to chicken out at the last hurdle and give up on my own happy ending out of... cowardly self-doubt.”
A blinding smile broke out on his lips and he took a single deep breath before letting every uncertainty go. He refused to bring them back home with him. They had no place in his future. Shaking himself off, like a dog trying to get rid of unwanted water droplets, he resumed his walk with steps that were suddenly hurried. He was bouncing down the hill with a fierce purpose. He was filled with a new determination. He was certain of the future that he'd planed and was cradling all his hopes within his palm.
The fragile first rays of the steadily raising moon touched briefly over the small square box that was nestled within his hand. Pale moonbeams wrenched shimmering flashes of delicate silver from the carefully etched legend that he'd paid a fortune to have delicately inscribed on the dark, velvety lid:
'What wealth of grace rests here belongs to Harry Potter...'
He read the words aloud and smiled, knowing that his Harry would understand why he used this one sentence. He'd placed his entire heart within this box. It contained every hope he held for their future. Every dream still left for him to dream. Every little possibility still open for them both to reach out towards...
He pocketed the ring-box once more and strode purposely down the path. His mind was filled with the warm image of home. With the cherished vision of his shadowed office and the promise of an evening spent embracing his beloved in contented companionship by the light of the fire.
Harry would be home in a few hours and they'd laugh and talk and kiss until the night became too old to hold them tethered to wakefulness. They'd walk hand in hand into their bedroom and lay down beside each other, like they'd done every night since the first time they slept together. They'd coil against one another, like two halves of the same creature intent on becoming joined once again, and their dreams would hold no nightmares from the past.
Saturday would come soon enough. And his question would receive the answer he desired. Of that he was utterly certain. Harry loved him through and through. Forever. Genuinely...
A soul-bond wasn't going to be enough to scare his gryffindor. Not when it'd finally lead them to the chance of pulling open that last door that he'd kept so firmly closed between them for a whole year.
From now on all doors would be opened. All rooms would hold light, all doubts would be vanished into exile. He had found his home at last. His safety. He'd found that coveted shelter where he wanted to risk dwelling from this day forth...
The end.
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I was thrilled to hear that you found so many things to enjoy about this particular story. I'm glad that you weren't too ruffled about my decision not to downplay the affection that Severus felt towards LiLy, even though this fic ended up being a lot longer -and slower- than it should have been because of that. Thanks so much for taking the time to both read and review. Your lovely comment was greatly appreciated. ;D
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I have a list of my favourite tales, you know. The first place has Elisejský klíč, the second is parted into Nocturno and Until Proven... and on the third there was The Marriage Stone. But now I think that there should be one more place for one more tale and its name is "The Voice Under All Silences by pekeleke"... It was wonderful. It was cruel, it was tender and cute some time, it was like baby-stepping. It was... yes, IT WAS!
There are tales, you know, but there are also THE TALES. And your tale belongs to the tales! And I am so proud that I have the chance to read it and share it with you! Thank you, pekeleke! And no, I am not disapointed:-) No chance!
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Well... I'm happy to see that you made it all the way to the end of this huge monster without throwing things at my head, my friend. ;)
This is a very generous review, you know? I've never heard of your Elisejský klíč, but the rest of the stories in your list are probably the most popular snarry classics out there and to have you place this work of mine right among them is a huge honor indeed, pat.
I'm glad that you enjoyed this roller-coaster tale of emotional healing so much. Thanks for taking the time not only to read it, but also to keep me up to date with your progress while you were doing it. Seeing this story unfold through your eyes was a really fascinating experience.
Take care for now, my friend.
Hugs
pekeleke
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Thank you, pekeleke:-)
Paw
Pat.