The voice under all silences. Chapter 4

[pekeleke]

THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 4

He detested this vile creature with all his might, with whatever fragile wisps remained of his heart and soul. He despised him with his every breath. Loathed him with a murderous rage. Hated him so completely, so utterly, that he failed to think of an appropriate enough answer to that horribly accurate statement for a second or two.

Silence stretched like a blanket of fire within this cursed room and the tension that rose between them felt like the initial, sickening quietness of a magical duel: it felt dangerous. Unwelcome.

He'd been lethally threatened. Lethally!. He'd been hit by this viper of a man when he'd expected a retreat and now lay, destroyed beyond salvation, before his enemy. He was figuratively bleeding from the kind of deep wound that no man ever recovers and he knew it. It had been his own fault, of course. Within the private confines of his mind he dared to recognize his own failings in this debacle.

-Constant vigilance, Snape!- The words seemed to mock him in the sharp, screechy voice of the now deceased Alastor Moody and he shuddered at the aptness of that thought. After years of being on his guard every waking second, he'd failed completely to protect himself before the very same child that he had found wanting so often in the past.

He'd cried victory too early, underestimating this particular adversary in the very same unpardonable way that had cost the Dark Lord dearly and, just like his erstwhile master, he'd been challenged, demolished and defeated without any mercy. He'd been utterly crushed...

Black eyes zeroed in on the victor as he stood, barely five paces away from the foot of his bed, like a frozen statue. He was young and seemed harmless, at least to a man like himself who had spent so much of his life with the likes of Mcnair and Grayback. Rodolphus Lestrange or any of the Carrows.

Potter wasn't like any of them. He looked pale and... heroic. His eyes shone with the kind of fire that only those fighting for justice ever seem to be able to call forth. His mouth was tightened into a determined slash that spoke of the kind of strength that wouldn't willingly bend. His cheeks were flushed with temper. His posture rigid, unyielding. He was young and good looking, clean shaved, athletic... He was a perfect blending of tanned, muscled physique and fierce willpower.

In no way did the dratted brat remind him of Bella. Or the insufferable dog. Or the thrice-dammed James Good-For-Nothing Potter, for that matter. He didn't even look like Albus...

Yet he was worse than all of them in his own way. For none of the others had ever managed to deal him the same kind of crippling blow that the man before him had just delivered. He'd been wounded, truly wounded. Brutally stricken at the very center of his heart, his very core...

This was a sin that only Voldermort himself had ever committed. One against which he'd rebelled, so savagely, that he'd turned himself from a murderer into a spy almost overnight. He'd done that many years ago. For Lily. For love to her memory. To atone for a crime that he'd committed against her and had never, not ever, forgiven himself for...

What wouldn't he now do for the child he'd loved like his own since he'd first held him?. For the son of his closest, most loyal friend?. For the only person on Earth who'd never truly betrayed him?. Never truly denied him?. For the one who had never, not ever, given up on him?. Draco had only ever loved him. Him!. With his million faults and idiosyncrasies. He'd been accepted by his godchild and cherished so utterly, so completely, that he'd discovered peace, at long last, within himself. He'd come to accept his monstrous darkness because Draco had done so and, if his godson could love him as he was, then he had no intention of proving that boy wrong, or making him feel ashamed of him. Not ever...

"You wouldn't dare!..." He choked out at last, and the words seemed to explode in the tense silence.

Potter's smile was vindictive. Hateful. Cocky.

"Will you risk it, then, Professor?. Will you call my bluff and see him lose... his soul?”

The foul words hovered between them, taunting him with their terrible threat and he all but shivered. His black eyes became frozen chips of onyx-colored ice and his right hand curled tightly into a frustrated fist that ached for his wand.

"Are you really attempting to convince me of the fact that you, Harry Potter, defender of kittens and fluffy Hufflepuffs alike, have the kind of darkness necessary to send an innocent boy to the Dementors?"

The emerald gaze did not falter. The smile froze, though. Turning into an angry curve that spoke of virulent emotions.

"Malfoy is not a boy, Professor!. Not any more at least" The rebuke was voiced harshly. Crudely. A cutting whisper that felt like the shout of an enraged banshee "He is not truly innocent, either. He was a Death-Eater. He saw plenty. He did little. And now he is free."

Severus' mind recoiled. He felt dread for the first time before this stranger who seemed to have taken over the hapless child he had once known.

"If Peterssen is to be believed, then the war has been done with for a long time. Four years should have been long enough for Draco Malfoy to craft a life so far removed from the past entanglements of his elders that anyone wanting to cause him harm should have to work very hard, indeed, to be successful”

Potter's jaw squared. His shoulders acquired a newer, even more threatening rigidity, and his voice rumbled with disbelieving anger when he challenged:

"Are you calling me a liar, Snape?"

Severus's heart froze. His mind seized for a second in utter, terrifying indecision.

He was gambling heavily indeed!. He was playing with a fire that would burn Draco. His Draco...

But he'd fought for far less worthier prizes in his life and, even if he were remotely inclined to try it, the simple truth was that he didn't even know how to stop fighting and surrender. Surrendering wasn't an option that he was willing to contemplate in this case, anyway. He'd have to risk everything...

He took a very deep breath before attempting the daunting task of forcing his drying tongue to utter every single syllable of his response:

"The child Dumbledore cherished wouldn't have, ever, threatened another with Dementors"

The smile that curved the boy's cold lips was a terrible and bitter thing. It was touched by darkness.

Those young eyes that looked so much like Lily's shone like chips of green colored ice.

"Dumbledore was known to cherish the wrong kind of child, professor. I thought you, better than most, would have remembered that!"

"You have no right to touch Draco Malfoy!. If it's me you want, Potter, then you have no issue with him whatsoever. How dare you attempt to blackmail me, using such foul means against a man who has done nothing to you?. Nothing!. May I remind you that he actually saved your useless life, when Mcnair brought you to the Manor?"

Potter suddenly paled. His shoulders hunched slightly forwards, as if mortally wounded. Eyes that were so green they resembled the enchanted canopy of the Forbidden Forest after a good rain, widened with unspeakable horror for a long drawn-out second.

"Yes. He saved me then. And I saved him afterwards from being burned to cinders by Fiendfyre. I'd say that particular debt was paid with plenty of interest, Professor!. He's been clean for a long time. His father too. Those are men who can turn with the tide and remain constantly afloat. But I'll sink him if I have to. If you make me"

There was a second, a horribly strained second, when he felt as if he'd been sucker-punched in the gut. He gritted his teeth as the bastard carried on blatantly threatening to harm what his heart held most dear and became certain that he'd throw up at any second. He forced his agitated breath under control. His burning eyes into a dry, hate-filled stare. Tried to marshal his whirling thoughts into the kind of cold and calculating mind-frame that had saved him from death time and time again, but the words, those awful words, continued to spill forth from the lips of Albus' pet hero:

"I can do it as well, Snape. So very easily. It won't be any trouble at all for the Head of the Auror Department, the Saviour himself, to dream up a few dastardly plots of Malfoy Junior's and have him pay for them. Dearly.

I'll do it for no other reason than the fact that he is your only weakness and I. Want. You!"

He'd been turned to stone by that last sentence. Condemned so completely into puzzled immobility that he could not even blink to relieve the awful burning that was turning his dark eyes into burning, prickly, intolerable torturing devices that he could no longer withstand. His throat pounded with the effort of holding in the rather overwhelming wave of sheer rage that was threatening to erupt into destructive reality from the very depths of his being. His thoughts whirled and he wondered what had happened to the boy he used to know. What was wrong with Lily's child. With Albus's boy. With Minnie's pride and joy? How had that Harry Potter turned into this monster?.

The silence that followed crushed him completely. It festered like the foul thing that it truly was: a weapon. A poison. The most elegant demonstration in the fine art of intimidation that had been directed his way in a very long time.

Potter waited him out, looking patiently at him through emerald green eyes that were focused and merciless. He started to blink very slowly. Breathing carefully in and out in a valiant attempt to stall for time that was ultimately useless, as each second slid relentlessly by, became another...

There was something wrong with him. Something utterly flawed. Something that kept him from devising any effective scape plan from this deadlock. He knew that there must be at least one, but his mind was gripped by terror for his godchild's safety. He could not think. He could not analyze. He could only feel and what he felt was anguish. Desperation. Frustrated defeat...

His eyes closed for a small second in the kind of trembling, exhausted vulnerability that he bitterly regretted even as it happened. He lacked the strength to carry on with the impassive act any longer and that small action would reveal his shameful weakness to his opponent. He could feel the change in the atmosphere of the room almost at once, heard the very slight rustle caused by the predator who watched him as it shifted it's weight from left leg to right. Relaxing it's stillness for the first time in minutes. Scenting weakened prey...

"Severus?"

His given name, pronounced once again by that foul mouth, was a sign of heart-wrenching defeat.

"What would you do if I say I don't believe you, Potter?" He heard himself ask through numb, echoing ears, conscious that this would be his last shot, fired into the encroaching darkness of defeat.

"I'll walk away. It will take me a few hours, a day at the most, but I'll make sure that you receive a front-row invitation to the execution by Dementor's kiss of one Draco Malfoy. I'll watch you from across the aisle as you lose him forever, and we'll both be thinking exactly the same thing"

Ebony eyes, widened in unutterable horror, zeroed in on the fiercely glittering emerald gaze of the maddened Saviour and he shivered with dread, with the kind of terror that not even the Dark Lord had managed to instill within his soul.

"Nothing will matter to me at that point, don't you understand?. Whether you sacrifice yourself for him and Malfoy lives, or you let him fall and regret it with every breath that you take after he is gone I still win, Snape. I'd have dealt you the harshest punishment there is. The only one that'll make you truly suffer."

His heart halted there and then, because he genuinely believed that this vile creature would behave just that cruelly. It was apparent to him that a man like Potter wouldn't have suddenly come up with a plan as vicious as this one without having put a lot of thought into it. A lot of accumulated hatred...

His chest rose in one last agitated intake of breath before he found enough courage to speak once more. Every word that he uttered was a gift to his godchild, a reluctant acquiescence to this monster's dark plans for the sake of the boy who loved him without restrains. Without conditions...

"What are your terms, Potter?"

Surprisingly, the auror paled when the question rent the air. There were shadows: horrible, bitter shadows turning that emerald gaze into a muddy, washed-out green. There were lines of untold anger turning that jaw-line to stone. There was such a rigidity to those wide, athletic shoulders that for a wild second he felt as if Potter's back might actually snap in two.

"So it is true, then. You'd sell yourself off for him in a heartbeat!. All that attention that you gave him back at Hogwarts... It was never an act to fool Voldermort, was it?. You love that little Ferret!"

Severus blinked in exhausted, wary affront. He could not understand what the Hell was wrong with the dammed bastard!.

"What are you whining about now, boy?. Wasn't that your bloody point?" He growled through gritted teeth. He was not in the mood for the brat's stupid games. He was feeling utterly wretched. Devastated. Dizzy... There was an excruciating throbbing in the region of his wound that had begun to pulse almost continuously. His throat felt parched, raw, and his nerves were shot to Hell. All in all, he could not cope with any more ridiculous nonsense from the little jerk before him.

"I... Yes. Of course!. That has been my point all along. It's just that... well, one thing is to imagine that someone like you might care that deeply for another person, but to have it so brutally confirmed is just a tad overwhelming!"

Severus' headache became a thing of nightmares. His eyes narrowed to thin slits as he attempted to surreptitiously avoid as much of the bright sunshine that was flooding the spacious room as he possibly could.

"Someone like me..." He repeated the awful sentence very quietly. One word lowering into the next with pained resignation. "Yes. I do imagine how shocking it must be for all of you, shiny heroes of our world, to be confronted with the fact that we, scoundrels, do love too!"

For some reason Potter's hackles rose. His eyes iced over between one owlish blink and the next, and his lips thinned.

"My terms are very simple: while you are in public you'll conform to the image of you that I so carefully crafted while you were trapped in your coma"

His senses reeled at the utterly incomprehensible nature of that request.

"Image? Of me? What on Earth...?"

The auror chuckled. Bitter mirth returning to replace the strange harshness that had invaded his features mere seconds ago.

"Ah, yes!. I forgot that you still don't know about that part... You've been very reluctant to fall into place with my initial design, so I'll have to explain this to you from the beginning..."

He watched as the boy lowered his head towards the floor and became promptly lost in gormless contemplation of those shiny boots he wore. There was something rather disturbing about the tense little silence that followed. It had a sad kind of quality that Severus, in his current state of mind, could not concentrate enough to ponder on...

"Four years ago, when I discovered that you'd survived, I decided that whatever fate the Wizarding World chose to grant you would probably never, ever, come to match my own idea of what you truly deserved"

"Yes, I had that point. You've been, so far, nothing but generous with your opinions regarding the matter. Why don't we skip ahead a bit, Potter?"

Golden-toned fingers curled in two white-knuckled fists that shook with temper:

"Do not interrupt me again!. I'll say my piece and I'll do it in my own time and with my own words. You don't get to rush me along and bully me into making a stupid mistake just because you can play the scornful, irritated bastard of a professor so well. I have now lived four years without you, Snape!. I have met far worse characters than you could ever fake to be. I've grown up while you've been sleeping and now your old tricks are nothing but pathetic little smoke-screens I can see through..."

Something cold and quite, quite frightening shivered down his spine upon hearing that fiercely gritted rebuke. His brow broke out in uncontrollable sweat, his lips thinned as he forced himself to swallow down the insults that had risen to the tip of his tongue and he stared straight into those glittering green eyes with undiluted hatred.

"I see. Please... do proceed, auror Potter"

"I've spent a considerable amount of time and resources into convincing everybody of the fact that you: the rightfully despised professor Severus Snape, have been nothing but a sickeningly self-sacrificing little hero all along. I spun a tale of almost Hufflepuffian loyalty to Albus Dumbledore. Told everyone about the tragic passion that you felt towards my mother, about the unrelenting bullying that you were subjected to in school and how that led you down your dark path at the worst possible time..."

A vein began to pulse in his sweaty temple, it's painful throbbing increased to devastating intensity with every single word that was pronounced. His heart froze into a cold lump and his mind shorted.

"You did... WHAT?" He could feel the strength of that scream ripping through the healing tissues of his damaged throat but there was nothing, nothing, of the absolute fury rampaging through his every cell at that particular second that was either controllable or even appeaseable!.

"Severus!..."

"You!... You took my life and KNOWINGLY made a MOCKERY out of it?"

Potter's face was chalky. It was ghostly-white and frantic, like the visage of a panicked little child.

"You must calm down, Severus!. Your throat needs to rest or it might close off again. Last time you almost died..."

"Die?. Do you think I won't welcome such an outcome?. Don't you think I'd love to rip you off the opportunity to shred my dignity to ribbons with your cruelly-conceived revenge?. I'd rather leave you hanging than give you the satisfaction of turning me into some kind of... of what exactly, Potter? A tragic hero of your own devising, in public, and some kind of pathetic little house elf at home?"

The boy flushed to the tip of his ears, emerald eyes lowering, in shame, back to his shoes.

"Something like that"

Severus laughed so hard that he hurt his neck again. His throat burned. His lungs seized and his heart ached so much that he... he would have gladly given the bastard the satisfaction to see him cry, if only... If only he'd believed that it would be over. All of it: The paying and the regretting. The eternal, grueling awareness of his own lack of worth in the eyes of those he'd tried so hard to keep away from harm...

"Do you really believe that I want to be held in high esteem by the bunch of brainless twits that find nothing wrong with turning your every word into some kind of Holy Truth for the masses?. Do you think that... what?... That I crave that kind of attention, like some kind of pathetic little nobody who can find nothing of value within himself? I don't need your conjured image of me to add fake worth to my existence, Potter. I know my exact value to the very last knut!"

The fierce, brutally combative glint was back with blinding force in those eyes that looked so much like Lily's...

"Do you?. Really?. Well... Allow me to disagree on that bloody point, my dear Severus!. I don't care for your scorn about my reasons. I don't even care for your outrage. But I do care for my word!. I gave it to create the illusion of a man above reproach. Of a man able to die, able to kill, for an ideal. I gave it before witnesses. I've have been continuing to give it for four long years. And I'll be hexed to Hell and back before I allow you to destroy all of my effort with the first bad-tempered comment to fall thoughtlessly from your foul mouth!'

Severus floundered. He gapped like a landed fish as his ears rang with the humiliation of having been so utterly brought to task by the child. He could not bear to look into those eyes. He could not trust his lips to remain closed around every hurtful retaliation that he could certainly deliver in response.

He had been chastised in the most debasing manner that he could conceive and he was raw with the shock of it all. He closed his burning eyes and his painfully throbbing neck drooped slightly, giving out the impression of a man who had just been fatally wounded. Regulating his agitated breath took all of his concentration for a second or two and he attempted, truly attempted, to bring his almost volcanic ire under control. The task was a struggle, though. A battle he was losing...

"Severus?...”

There was a note of concerned inquiry in that anxious rendition of his given name but he could neither trust it nor address it. He resented the familiarity with which the boy referred to him. Distrusted the false worry. Shied away from the horrible certainty that this... this confusing mix of unreasonable hatred and instinctive consideration would be his lot in life when things were done. Potter would be to him what his father had been to his own mother: a disturbing, frighteningly inconsistent master. Violent one second, shatteringly gentle the next...

He didn't know if he could survive such a thing. Not when he'd seen in painful, heart wrenching detail the exact results of those kind of mind games.

"So I am to play the hero while in public. Anything else, master?" He challenged scornfully, so brutally rebelling against the barely-there thread of gentleness present in the auror's tone that the man himself took a single, uncertain step backwards in surprised disconcertion. Green eyes raked through his features as if digging for lost treasure. Examining him with focused attention in order to asses him further, analyze his every response. Gather, from his own ugly features, even more ammunition that could be mercilessly used against him.

Well..., He was done with this game!. He was done with giving the blasted jerk exactly what he wanted. The man wanted him to fight. To suffer. To drown in this pit of mortification that had been so very carefully created just for him. He was going to show this little child just how unwise it really was to poke a wounded snake with a stick. From now on Potter was going to become intimately acquainted with the reason why he'd been such a successful spy for over twenty long years. He could play the servile little toe-rag like the pro he truly was. He could play it so faithfully that there would be no satisfaction to be had by the great Saviour. He was going to show Harry Potter that even in submissive acceptance there is rebellion to be planned. Resistance to be delivered and poisonous hatred to be allowed to fester...

"Do not call me master!"

The request was as incensed as expected, of course, and he felt like smiling through the lump lodged in his throat, as he allowed his dark eyes to lower in a perfectly respectful little bow.

"As you wish, auror Potter"

"You will accept my invitation to spend the rest of your convalesce at my home and you'll expressly insist, to your godson in particular, that this development pleases you!"

There was a thread of belligerent challenge present in those words, an almost contemptuously gleeful expectation of rebellion that he had no intention of providing. Not any more...

"As you wish "

He offered the same little sentence once again without lifting his eyes. Without flinching at all. Without allowing the virulent rage that was filling him completely to so much as being hinted at in his own tone.

Blankness... He has blankness and obedience once again. He was nothing but a servant. A devoted, brainless entity with no heart to feel, no mind to think. With no pride to be injured for as long as his detested new master remained before him. He would do this again. For Draco...

He'd become this once more and he'd survive, somehow. Just to spite Potter!.

"You will reside at my house and, while you do, you shall not ever leave a question of mine unanswered. You will not disobey a direct order. You will treat me, and those I call my friends, with the respect that we deserve and you will never, not ever, abandon my roof in order to live somewhere else"

He was so relieved that he could have snorted at the absolute stupidity of the creature. These directions were so vague that even a half blind, totally dumb and deaf first year Slytherin could find a way to circumvent them in most circumstances. He was neither blind nor dumb. He was very definitely not deaf. He was no first year, either. But he was Slytherin...

"As you wish."

Potter's sigh was a symphony of frustration. It was impatient and pleasantly irritated.

"Will you stop that already?"

He did not dare smile, vindictively or otherwise.

"Stop what, auror Potter?"

A couple of footsteps echoed forwards. There was sudden pressure on the edge of the mattress as a pair of tightly clasped, golden-colored fists appeared at the very edge of his field of vision.

"Look at me, Severus!"

He took a deep breath before complying, mentally waving goodbye to peace of mind. To rest. To the simple enjoyment of allowing himself the respite of being hated by people he'd never cared for, never protected. People like Peterssen and the million others just like him. Then his gaze rose to fix on Potter's affronted visage with blank politeness.

"You might have to rethink this new creepily docile thing you've got going on... It won't work with me, you see?. I know you. I grew up under your shadow. I've endured your temper and have been on the wrong end of that cutting wit of yours more times than I can count... I've been inside your head. Inside your pensive. I saw those memories you gave me, your very worst I'm sure, again and again before I decided to return them to you. I know who you are and I know what I'm doing. Nothing you can try will mess with my head, Snape. Nothing!"

He blinked right into the idiot's flushed face very slowly... The weary, bored drag of his eyelids that managed to convey without any words needing to be uttered how utterly unimpressed that ridiculous speech had just left him was an absolute work of art:

"Your point being?"

Potter was so incensed that his jawbone crunched audibly. Those fists dug into the mattress as if attempting to burrow right into the filling and the boy's eyes, those beautiful emerald eyes that Lily had given him, flashed green fire before the brat took a single calming breath:

"All right, have it your way!" The response was angry, yes. It was as frustrated as Severus had been expecting it would be, but it lacked viciousness.

The auror's face scrunched in pained concentration, as if he were listening to his own thoughts through a thick, wide-spread fog. His lips thinned and his shoulders shook as he shot a step backwards. Then he straightened himself and looked down towards his feet for a very long time...

When he finally came back to life it was to walk around the bed with forceful steps. He stopped suddenly, right in front of the bedside table, and quite rudely decided to sit on the mattress itself.

Severus' whole frame became rigid stone from head to foot. He resented the boy's proximity with every fiber of his being. Potter was just too close to him. So close, in fact, that he could feel the heat coming off the auror's body starting to warm the left side of his own, through the thick layers of bedding that covered him. He lifted his own legs up in a clearly defensive motion. Stubbornly applying as much pressure as he could infuse into the move, in order to release the trapped blankets from underneath the boy. His chest swiveled slightly to the left when he finally forced himself to face the child. A defiant ebony stare glared daggers of pure hatred across barely any distance at all from behind a flimsy fortress built from trembling, knobbly knees and crossed off arms.

"If you are planing on accepting my terms then I'm afraid you'll have to swear a Wizard's Oath”

The little bastard smiled at him before blatantly daring to plop his unwelcome hand over Severus' barricading knee, as if to mock him for the effort.

He shuddered with repressed ire and his gaze lowered to those golden digits that were resting upon him. The weight of that hand bothered him totally, it unnerved him and challenged him to shake it off as soon as he could possibly manage it. He stared at it with so much dislike that the appendage twitched.

Relaxed, uncurled fingers slowly curled against his thin kneecap forming a tense claw-shape that dug very slightly against the mound of bedding keeping their skin apart. Pushing mercilessly against the flimsy barrier that was keeping that inappropriate contact from finally tipping into the wrong side of decency. He desired so strongly to be able to strip that tanned skin off those offensive fingers that his dark, ebony eyes flashed with sheer poison.

"Severus?"

"A Wizard's Oath does not require your loathsome touch upon my knee, Mr. Potter!" He intoned frostily. Raising his pale, drawn face to offer the other man a glimpse of his unconsciously discomfited expression. The hand tightened around him for an intolerable second before finally pulling away.

A wry smirk twisted the lips of the little jerk upwards as that messy head shook from side to side as if in wonder. Short, spiky dark hair fell against that strong profile, obscuring the expression painting shadows in those bright green eyes from Severus' scrutiny.

"You'll swear, then?"

"I shall keep to your public story. Accept living in your home with delighted glee in front of my godchild. Respect you with bovine fervor. Obey your direct orders and remain under your roof at all times, in exchange for Draco's permanent protection from overzealous auror investigations. Is that it, Potter?"

Lily's child turned towards him once again and proceeded to study his resentful features with uncomfortable intensity.

"This deal remains a secret between us. Nothing that ever happens within the confines of it is to be discussed with any other at any point."

He gapped at the idiot.

"You believe I'd ever confess that I'm to be your house elf of my own free will?"

There was an angry flush slowly spreading across the frustrated young features of the lauded hero. Those young lips opened, as if to deliver some kind of scathing remark, but were very firmly snapped closed at the last possible second. A tense silence reigned in the room. It was heavy and tension-filled. Expectant.

"I do swear to comply with your demands, Harry James Potter. I do swear it upon... what? My magic? My Life? What would you like exactly?"

Emerald eyes, widened with what looked impossibly close to dazzled disbelief, settled over him. The boy blinked very slowly and his whole face turned pale. For an utterly bewildering second he seemed ready to bolt and then he swallowed. His shoulders squared determinedly, as if readying himself for a fierce battle, and a wand that Severus could not recognize was pulled off it's holster and pointed straight at him with unwavering purpose.

"You'll swear on Malfoy's life, Professor!" Potter growled, so viciously, that Severus felt like flinching. Only a lifetime of practice hiding his reactions kept his gaze blank. Emotionless. Utterly empty of any thought and fear.

"I do swear, then. As a wizard. I swear on Draco Malfoy's life that you shall have your God-damned revenge. I'll give you the obedience, the cohabitation, the cloak and dagger secrecy and the sanctity of your public word respected, just as you've demanded of me, Harry Potter!” He spat the words with scornful venom, with all-pervading hatred come to life in his dark tone, and the wand glowed as that bastard held his forearm fast. Linking them together with a grip as strong as iron.

"I do accept your Wizard's Oath, Severus Snape. On Draco Malfoy's life!” The auror intoned with a touch of utterly incomprehensible fury and, even though he narrowed his black eyes in puzzled disconcertion, he had no time at all in which to contemplate that bewildering development before the magic of the oath began to pulse.

He'd expected the unwelcome binding magic to become ferociously negative. Had prepared himself to suffer once again the same kind of unbearable pain that had enveloped his arm every time he'd been stupid enough to agree to a Wizard's Oath in the past...

The feeling currently cursing through his arm had nothing in common with any experience he'd ever been on the receiving end of, though. There was unfamiliarity to the magic, yes. But there was also a puzzlingly recognizable... warmth. A touch of something that his own magic trusted, somehow.

It felt warm and welcoming. Like the long absent touch of a friend, finally returned home after a great absence...

The binding itself coiled around his arm in threads of gold. Of red. Of gently pulsing white. It did not rip across his flesh with searing, ever-darkening harshness painted in grays and blacks and purples.

His eyes widened in shock as the thickening tendrils of the spell coiled and coiled around their clasped arms. Weaving them together with the kind of delicate gentleness that he'd only ever read about in books that he hadn't cared to touch in a very long time. Books about oaths that pertained to other, gentler things. To the kind of emotions that had their opposite in hatred...

"Potter!" The bond grew and grew and grew... It went past their clasped arms to coil around their shoulders. Constantly spreading inwards, towards their chests and heads. He felt it reach deep inside him and it's almost... affectionate... nature made him panic. He rebelled against it with all his might, attempting to reject it, and the colors turned brighter, fiercer, stronger...

His face paled when his eyes rose to clash with the boy's and found him smiling in awed wonder. Terror gripped him and he attempted to disengage himself, but was stubbornly forced to hold on by the tanned fingers of his enemy.

"Potter, something is not right!" He barked in frantic desperation, pouring all of his considerable will against the bond. His head started to pound and the muscles in his arm began to finally experience the unendurable pain of a proper forceful oath. Sweat began to bead in his ashen forehead and a cramp that was powerful enough to cripple him seized his trapped limb from wrist to shoulder..

"Severus, what are you doing? Don't fight it!"

As if through an ever-darkening tunnel he heard that ridiculous advice and felt like crying. What was the idiotic child thinking?. Didn't he realize that the nature of the spell was... corrupted?.

His teeth ground in stubborn concentration as he set to repel the fiercely glowing tendrils that seemed intent on tying them together in the most threatening manner. Things would have been so much easier if the bloody Potter had bothered to help, but judging from his ridiculous advice...

"Oh, Hell!..." He croaked out weakly when he felt his mind finally give. His arm succumbed to the strength of the magic pushing against it and he felt his bones shatter. Awful pain flooded him completely, bringing his waning concentration in an out of focus. He could hear the panicked screams of the young auror over the distressed sound of his own heavy breathing...

"Severus! Severus!. You have to go with it, you idiot!'

-No!- He thought to himself: a savage and uncompromising rebuttal. A rejection. A stubborn resistance against the intent of the magic that surrounded him.

"No!" He heard his breaking voice utter the thought aloud, turning it into reality the moment he brought his objection into abrupt and rebellious life. It was then that the magic turned violent. It became almost ferocious in it's clear determination to force him into accepting the purpose that had brought it forth. He was nothing against it. Nothing!. He was a mere human being. A single, wounded wizard.

He had no chance to win the battle he had picked and, as he felt the shockingly strong energy course through him with implacable might and realized that his treacherous body was irremediably succumbing to it, he believed, truly believed, that he had played his last foolish card and that this time... this time nothing and no one, not even Harry Potter, could save his worthless hide...

TBC...

Ch3

Ch5