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THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 2

Chapter 2.

Severus heard them come and go as if through a fog. People who sounded both familiar and strange. Some had old, watery-sounding voiced. Some were impersonal, professional, clinically cold and softly spoken. One sounded tentatively tender, contrite beyond compare; uneasy, but also brimming with such gentle affection that her touch upon his brow felt like the caress of a long-stranded mother. Her voice soothed him straight into tranquillity with the strength of her regret alone. 'Minnie. Don't you cry for me, please. You were never meant to know the truth.'

More often than not there was silence, an utter sort of peace that didn’t frighten him at all. There was nothing here. Nothing at all apart from a curious sort of calm that allowed him to simply be, to exist as if he were floating in a never-ending flow of water or flying among clouds. Severus was grateful for the unexpectedly pleasant experience. It suited him just fine since he had no desire to think about anything. He'd thought hard enough while he'd been alive, thank you very much, and he’d no interest in feeling emotions, either. He felt safer now that he was so thoroughly empty.

Eventually, though, Severus realized that he couldn't actually avoid thinking, and then began to understand that this—thing—this hushed darkness filled with weepy noises and creepily consoling pats to the back of his hand could not possibly be Albus' beloved 'Greatest New Adventure.' That unwelcome awareness brought home an even more distressing realization: the blasted muggles were wrong about that third-time lucky nonsense, but then wasn't that par for the course in Severus' wretched existence? Of course the muggles were wrong. The concept itself made no actual sense, did it? Severus wondered idly about what sort of madness could have possibly possessed him to pay any sort of attention to the same species that had begotten his miserable excuse for a father and couldn’t help but cringe. Dear Merlin, he must have been mad. Or dying. Or both. Again!

Severus kept fading in and out of consciousness, in and out of pain, in and out of reality for a very long time. Sometimes he saw people that should not be here, in Azkaban, because they were gentle souls. Beautiful, distressingly naive people who couldn't possibly belong between these murder-infested walls. These were people who deserved better. People like Minnie and Poppy and Rubeus. They all touched him hesitantly here and there, sometimes they took his hand, caressed his cheek, traced the pale curve of his ear, or brushed a lock of hair away from his face. Sometimes they patted the bed comfortingly or covered him up with blankets, offered him water. Sometimes they also wept. Yes. They wept all over him, the heathens!

Severus saw people as well. Strange mirages that disturbed him with bizarre visions that defied all logic. He didn’t know if those were figments of his imagination or plain old-fashioned nightmares, twisted wisps of unconscious regrets that had taken form. Why else would he be seeing that particularly annoying band of cheerful, red-haired people? Weasleys, for Merlin's sake! Severus refused to have Weasleys in his 'Adventure'. Or his delusion. Or whatever the hell this was.

Severus remembered the Know-It-All trying to suffocate him into a new death, his fourth, with that unmanageable bush she called hair. She talked to him constantly, disrupting his precious floating with her shrill voice as she lectured him, him! advising him to pull himself out of 'this hole' and face the music, posthaste. Of all the disrespectful—

And then there was Draco. Severus remembered Draco’s presence/visit/dream? with the vivid recall of the feverish. Or the wishful. He remembered him with the shattering regret of a man who knew himself to have failed that boy utterly. His godchild, a soul more precious to him than unicorn-horn powder, and he hadn't been able to protect him as he should have. Not from everything. Not completely. Almost not at all.

Draco came and went; then, came again and again. And again. His blond tresses shone like moonlight in the darkness and his long-fingered hands combed Severus' own hair ever so gently—the gesture familiar enough to bring tears of pure longing to Severus’ eyes. "Dra-co!” He'd called out weakly, and had felt a little less empty when he’d heard the shushing sound that issued from his godson's trembling lips, along with the fervently voiced promise that told him:

"Everything is going to be alright, godfather. Go back to sleep, please. That's the only way to regain your strength. We've got you, I swear. This time we've got you for real. Just be patient for a little longer."

Severus cared not for his godson’s lies but treasured the image they painted, nevertheless. He appreciated the hopeful smile that warmed the beautiful depths of Draco's glittering grey eyes and treasured the loving expression plastered all over that deeply beloved face with everything he had. His godson's honest devotion was meant for him, after all. Severus knew Draco loved him unconditionally, despite his many failings, and he loved the boy in return with equal fierceness.

Sometimes there were also sounds that weren't voices. Familiar echoes of everyday activities that lulled him into sleep often mixed with other kinds of incomprehensible noises that disturbed him greatly. He heard the soothing twinkling of slowly melting ice and the loud pop of potions bottles being constantly uncorked around him. Another of his constant companions was the soft echo of footsteps, sometimes approaching, sometimes leaving and, sometimes, even coming to a halt in his vicinity for what felt like hours on end.

There were sentences, too. Utterly bewildering tidbits of information that he'd garnered like a miser, only to feel bitterly cheated by their unfathomable meaning; by their baffling lack of logic; by the very oddness of their contents. He'd heard them in batches. In flashes. In broken, fought-for seconds of ever-waning clarity. He'd heard them being both shouted and cried. Whispered and raged. Exhausted and defeated. Hopeful. Concerned. Desolate.

Severus heard Poppy enumerate an exhaustingly long list of various ailments: malnutrition, dehydration, broken rib, sprained ankle, infected wip marks, infected wound, poison, blood loss, burns—She spoke with a voice like thunder about hexes of the skin and of the bone. About curses and some nervous system failure nonsense, and Severus couldn't help but wonder why on Earth should she sound so agitated while giving such convoluted lecture to only Circe knew who. In any case, her voice, be it real or imagined, brought him mostly comfort.

Severus also heard someone he could not easily place: a healer? A Potions Master? Definitely some mightily starchy character who often droned on and on and on about the properties of one or other poison when in contact with dark magic, and Severus suddenly realized exactly what Peterson was up to. The Aurors must be in on it, too, because Severus had recognized Kingsley's deep baritone as the man agreed to the dastardly deed in hushed undertones. They were going to off him on the quiet. Poison him while he lied, defenceless, in his sickbed, and then they planned to perform some kind of—marking? on his body. Something that meant to leave—echoes that would remain even after death.

Luc was here too. Luc. And Severus couldn't believe the old scoundrel's plan to walk away Scott-free a second time had actually worked, but he’d heard that familiar drawl as clearly as if his oldest friend had perched himself on the mattress of Severus’ bed. Luc often bellowed at all the others. Or called them ‘utter morons’ and argued about incomprehensible things like the purpose and control and the ownership of curses. He even whispered, in a hush-hush kind of confidential aside, the one word in his long-winded explanations that made absolutely no sense at all to Severus: Parseltongue. What in the hell was going on here? Why would Luc, of all people, be in cahoots with the ministry to kill him? They had forgiven each other outright treachery, for Merlin's sake!

Sometimes Severus thought he’d heard Minnie pleading for his forgiveness. She told him strange things about Hogwarts, like the impossibly difficult charms that had been required to restore the ceiling of the Great Hall or how the Room of Requirement had misplaced itself after to some fire or other. She said that Albus' portrait had screamed at the Minister of Magic until the man was purple in the face and that the castle wasn’t accepting new headmasters anymore. Severus heard that last bit of particularly puzzling nonsense and wished he could frown thunderously at her. What utter tosh was this? Why would Hogwarts need to choose anyone new when Minnie was still there? None of it made a single wit of sense to him which, after careful consideration, led Severus to believe that he'd either drifted off at some point in her tale and had therefore missed some sort of crucial information on the subject, or had managed to misunderstand her entirely.

Molly Weasley came to annoy him with her cheerful, high-pitched voice. She shoved warm broth and apple juice down his parched throat. Oh, Merlin, how he hated the apple juice—She constantly pried his lips open and poured all kinds of things into him: soups, milk, water, and ripened bites of one juicy fruit or another.

She also lectured him non-stop about the dangers of being 'so disgustingly thin,' often raging about protruding bones, shallow cheeks, concave bellies and only The Founders knew what other kind of crazy matronly new fads. Severus mostly ignored her anyway, as he was in no mood to even pretend to understand what all that ridiculous teenage nonsense was truly about. Killing themselves with hunger in order to stay svelte—what utter rot!

Draco argued with someone almost constantly, and he gave the same dogged response again and again with a firm, determined tone: "No. No. No! NO. It won't work. Please, don't! Are you crazy? -Potion. The potion—That potion shouldn't... You must find another way. He won't forgive you, or us. He won't forgive any of us!"

Severus didn't like the distress he heard in Draco's beloved voice whenever he argued thus. He didn't like the idea that some bullying scumbag was daring to exploit his precious godchild's natural talent for the craft he'd so carefully taught him, and he wondered what could Luc possibly be doing to miss every sign of the trouble brewing right under his nose. Severus attempted to discern the nature of the discussed potion many times but his treacherous senses would often shut down on him at the worst possible second, leaving him frustrated, on edge, and utterly impotent to save his precious Draco. Again.

Potter was here, too. He was here all the bloody time and always uncomfortably close. Always touching Severus’ cheek or his forehead, his ear, his hand—The jerk had even dared to comb Severus’ hair once, and to read aloud a particularly interesting article on the properties of the Aurgular Blue Fungus in mood-stabilizing potions. Severus heard his voice constantly, too, as the boy demanded updates on Severus’ health from Poppy. Curtailed the amount of time Draco was allowed to spend at his bedside, and even dared to order Molly Weasley to let him rest.

Potter argued with Minnie. With Kingsley. With the starchy, professional one and even with Luc. The brat argued with virtually everyone again and again. And Again. AND AGAIN. He kept disagreeing obnoxiously with everybody’s opinion about poisons, and hexes, and markings, and snakes and yes, bloody Parseltongue, too. So they all ranted and railed and growled and shouted at one another until all Severus wanted to do was to yell them to shut the fuck up and let him sleep in peace.

Potter argued about other things, too. Things that made no sense. Things -and people- that had been dead and buried for absolute ages. People like James Potter and Sirius Black. Things like old pranks and nightmares and deceptions. He argued with the Bush-Head and the Freckle-King about someone who wouldn't believe, who wouldn't understand, who wouldn't give a chance. He also argued about choices and gambles, and the right thing to do, and ensuring—ensuring what? Severus couldn’t remember.

The brat talked once about debts, too. And retribution. He talked about someone's old potions book that he'd lost, and how he was so very, very, sorry about that. He rambled some nonsensical tripe about memories, and Legilimency, and the strong connection that builds overtime between two minds that had been forced to share everything.

Magic—Potter talked about magic a lot. And about luck. And about Albus. He droned on and on about some chambers he'd restored from the images he'd lifted off a pensive and, at one point, he confessed the strangest thing in the tenderest of voices: love. Potter felt love for some unfortunate soul. Love of the eternal kind, apparently. Love of the painful, hopeless, variety.

Love… What a truly strange thing to ever whisper in the ear of one's former professor! Severus couldn't fathom why in the bloody hell the perfect Hero of the Wizarding World had whispered that most intimate of words aloud in the quiet of the never-ending night that held him captive. The boy had confessed the existence of such a huge chink in his armour to an enemy; a sleeping enemy, granted, but an enemy nevertheless.

The entire outrageously inappropriate business was, for one thing, highly unusual and for another so plainly bewildering that Severus couldn't even begin to understand Potter's reasoning for disclosing so big a secret unless the object of his affections was among the gaggle of brainless creatures that surrounded him so faithfully. It took Severus an embarrassingly long time to realize that the menace must be infatuated with Miss Granger, and Severus would have wept in despair at the idiocy of the Savior if he'd had it in him to feel any amount of pity whatsoever towards anyone whose last name was Potter. The Granger bint was so blindly besotted with the latest Weasley disaster that they might as well have been joined at the hip. No wonder Potter's last remaining grain of sense had vanished out the window. The poor, pathetic bastard—Lily would have been devastated.

Just as Severus was getting used to being constantly irritated by these confusing mirages of his former associates, something even stranger happened. Something meant to change the bewildering Status Quo. Severus felt the darkness of the memories it brought him long before he realized what the actual source of his unease was, and then he was sweating, trembling, lost in a world forged on the very worst memories he possessed: the Dark Lord. The Dark Mark. Blood and curses. Torture. Pain. Betrayal. All of it was pulled forth, dragged out into the open from the very depths of his being by the most hateful, hissing sound of all: Parseltongue.

Severus shivered and flailed. Snared, like the most fragile of insects, in the web of a hungry spider. He was being held into position by some kind of thick, unyielding bindings that denied him the freedom of escape, no matter how much he struggled. Severus was terrified. He couldn’t remove himself from the vicinity of that horrible sound, and he knew from bitter experience the sort of awful, terrible things that invariably accompanied that thoroughly detested hissing.

Severus came to the realization that he was trapped. Worse than that: he was bound. He'd been weakened somehow but he couldn't remember the details clearly. Had he been discovered? Oh, Merlin, let the Dark Lord be furious enough to bypass the long, drawn-out torture routine and head straight for dismemberment if that was the case. Severus shuddered to imagine what the next few hours of his life would entail were he not to be granted this probably last and very desperate wish. How had he been discovered, though? Had he put any of the others at risk? By Salazar, he hoped not.

Severus had obviously failed in his task to protect Lily's son. Had one more painful regret to add to his already exhaustingly long list. He hadn't been strong enough, cunning enough, courageous enough—He only hoped he'd been at least tight-lipped enough to protect whatever viable plans the Order still had, whoever's safety rested on the continued impenetrability of Grimmauld Place, and what pitiful little knowledge the Light possessed about the Dark Lord's stash of Horcruxes and their ultimate destruction.

The sibilant hissing rose and ebbed with the quality of a chant and Severus came to the horrifying conclusion that this felt like a ritual of some kind, but—No. No. It wasn't like any old ritual at all. It was a requiem. He knew, then, that this time there would be no reprieve to be found. He'd be granted no second chance, no forgiveness. He'd messed up everything, somehow. He'd messed up Big Time. 'I'm so sorry, Albus.'

Severus realized that he must have spoken aloud when the beastly stream of words halted abruptly and a wide, too-warm hand came to rest on the left side of his clammy temple. It brushed aside a lock of his hair that had become irritatingly stuck to his sweaty skin.

"Sssehhh haavs shruus?" A voice that was much softer than he'd expected appeared to be questioning him about something and he wondered for a crazy, panicked, second if he hadn't misinterpreted the situation. Could he be taking part in this... thing... voluntarily? Could he have forgotten that he'd allowed the Dark Lord to—what? Bind him? Knock him unconscious with some hex? Blur the sharpness of his usual awareness with some kind of hallucinogenic potion? Could this thing/chant/ritual be one more of those distasteful tasks that he had to perform for his despised Lord in order to remain beyond suspicion “among the faithful” for a little while longer?

"Sssehhh haavs shruus?" The question came again, and it was pronounced more strongly this time, spoken in a tone that wasn't quite so tentative. It sounded a little too impatient, a little too abrupt, and Severus shivered with dread even as he frowned, crippling indecision and terror warring for supremacy at the forefront of his mind while his thoughts raced. Was there any chance at all that he hadn’t blown his cover?

Severus’ stomach cramped and his skin crawled when he felt the touch again. His hair was being very gently combed, carefully set away from his damp brow. Strong fingers curled oh-so-tenderly around his jaw-bone, tilting his head sideways before a sharp, lacerating pain flared on the right side of his neck.

A harsh scream of unbearable pain escaped Severus’ throat before he could suppress it, and the dreaded hissing resumed instantly. It descended upon his senses almost ferociously, making him feel like he was on the receiving end of a veritable torrent of commands he didn’t have a hope in hell of understanding, let alone obeying.

Severus was suddenly plunged into the very depths of agony. Something awful, foetid, putrid, seemed to be slithering down the skin of his throat. It was burning him like lava. Branding him like cattle. Seeping out from his very soul.

His head felt heavy, held so strongly between a pair of merciless hands that Severus began to doubt again. To worry incessantly. To fear that this might be his end. He attempted to pull himself away from that punishing hold but was held fast, brutally forced to endure this gruesome torment and submit to a pain that rivalled the Cruciatus. He was forced to remain exactly where he was: trapped, weakened, utterly impotent.

Unlike his usual experiences with his Master's bouts of viciousness, Severus found himself unable to block this. He was denied the blessed relief of blacking out, of closing his mind down and fading into whiteness so he panicked, knowing that he wouldn't be able to bear this utter torment for much longer. A few minutes, maybe even as little as ten or fifteen more and he'd break... Merciful Merlin... He was a shameful coward. He could not bear the guilt. The knowledge that he'd succumbed so easily, in the end, was simply unendurable. ‘Oh, Albus! You placed your trust in the wrong hands.’

He'd have to beg before he broke, then. His silence was the Order's only chance. "Ple-Please, my Lord—" he whispered wildly, managing to interrupt that virulent torrent of hisses with the last reserves of courage in his possession, and could have fainted in abject gratitude when the pounding, brutal flow of sounds halted once again. There was silence then, a tense, frozen, dangerous thing. Then foreign hands moved around his head once more, cupping it now rather than holding it captive. Some sort of soft, wet cloth was being used to wipe the sweat off his clammy brow and his face turned towards it with exhausted gratitude.

"Severus?" He understood his name, then. It was the first sound that made any sense to him in this long, awful night, and his eyelids fought the mighty weight of utter fatigue in order to face whatever monsters lurked beside him among the shadows. His eyes didn’t open as much as he'd hoped for, but they still blinked apart far enough for Severus to see flickering flames—No. No. A candle, and... a wand? Yes. That was definitely Albus' wand. He could make out the heavy, leathery cover of a thick, old book that was richly embossed with the Malfoy crest, and a bedroom shrouded in gloom and green, so much green. Green like the colour of a wet, vibrant rainforest. Green like spring, like dewy leaves. Green like Lily—No. Not Lily... Like Lily's eyes.

Then there was blackness and pain. Over and over and over again. Severus became the trapped victim of the most terrible bout of fevered agony and suffered thus for a very long time. Too long. He was imprisoned within this darkness for a veritable eternity.

TBC...

Ch1

Ch3