The Protector

Title: The Protector
Chapter: [2] Love

Rating (for Chapter): PG-13
A thanks goes to: Steffanie for doing such a great job in editing this. Thank you!
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, nor do I truthfully wish to.

He was quiet from then on, in the mess hall he barely spoke, in potions he stared at the floor. Snape cornered me once. Telling me that whatever I'd done to him, I had better fix it, and soon, otherwise he wouldn't be quite so forgiving of my blunders and tardiness. He sounded just like my father, though he lacked my father's rage and passion. Snape stared at life through a dusty jar, as if it had already kicked him enough for him to barely care. There was a small amount of fear in Snape. Not a cowardice fear, but a fear perhaps of being kicked again.

My father had taught me to see weakness in all things; he just didn't expect me to care. Normally I didn't, normally almost everything, every creature, was below me.

Not Potter though. Potter, who beat me in all the areas that counted. Potter, who suffered a different sort of abuse his entire life. Potter who was so lonely that he would have to understand, eventually.

But he just sat there in a broken heap of himself. He wouldn't even talk to Ron or that stupid muggle, Hermoine. Not even eye contact for Dumbledore at dinner. No sad smile lurked in his mouth or peeked out from the dark tucks of his eyes.

His suffering had reached new levels. Pain tugged like water at his feet pulling him further and further away from shore. He existed as a tiny boat without motor or sail. I don't know what he thought, but he became dull to the rest of the world. Where previously they enjoyed his shyness, his courage, and his celebrity, they now only glanced and whispered as they passed by him in the halls.

I watched him suffer for weeks. I watched it intensify and eat away at him. Growing as a horrid stomach worm with teeth, a snake coiled; its own head a black-eyed, fanged, pit of despair. It seemed that only one beautiful mistake had brought all his memories, kicking and screaming, back to him. All the pain filled nothingness of despair that rests deep inside of the very damned, and the very saved, suddenly stirred.

It was easy to get him alone again; the only treks he ever took part in were the necessary ones. One evening, when almost all of his roommates had snuck into the prefect showers, I crept under his bed. When he turned the lights out I pulled myself into the murkiness of the shadows dancing awkwardly from his bed. He gripped the covers like I was some demon coming to suck his soul away. With a few hurried words we where magicked away.

We ended up a little off my mark. I was aiming for the dark forest but we ended up a few feet outside of it; in the crisp wet grass. The forest pulsed slightly; it being old, and holding many dear secrets. At first he had no choice but to let me pin his arms the wet grass. I pressed his body deep into the earth. I wanted him to smell it, to taste it, to nearly be it. In all it's freshness and beauty. He fought against me loosening an arm or untying his legs from my hips from time to time, but I would just shove them back into place using far more force than I originally had to subdue him.

"Potter." I said it once, and he froze his body ice. He knew who I was. He knew what I did. I watched the gentleness of his neck closely for vibrations, for eons. "Does your scar hurt?"

"No." He muttered his teeth tense, his lips nearly kissing the ground, bits of grass stuck up his nose, hopefully making him at least uncomfortable enough to calm down.

"Then I'm not going to hurt you." I eased up and he wrestled out of my grasp. Shoving himself away from me he stared at me a moment. His eyes didn't accuse. They just filled with tears, like a child who has just been struck or yelled at for the very first time, and he cried. He knew, he could see that I was going to do it again. Maybe not just then, but sometime, eventually I would do it.

I kissed him softly on the cheek as if I believed I too was never going to harm him again, but his fate was already sealed. He didn't resist, even when I pulled him on top of me and he could have fled, could have run screaming away and into the night. Even when my hands snuck under his clothes and tore his flesh. Even when my tongue lapped at his blood, and he lay mentally broken.

"There are things." I hissed, close, very close to his ear, so close that his very own blood dripped onto the fine chewable flesh of his earlobe. "That you don't talk about." I buried my nose into his neck, the place where his fear rose to my nostrils, accumulated itself as salt, and teased my skin with its softness. The feeling of my father's boots kicking me danced near the back of my throat threatened to tip over. I sighed into him. One day Harry would love me. He would have to. Because I loved him. And someone out there, someone just had to love me. I laughed, a heartbroken; the world has turned to shit laugh, and carved slowly into his flesh with my fingernails.

Late that night towards the early hours of dawn it stormed, I lay awake in my bed, staring at the ceiling. I could feel the event unfolding, creeping up towards me on slender feet. The scent of the air, the electricity of the storm, made my hair stand on end. There was always something exhilarating, anyone who listens very carefully, can feel the universe's breath of pause as the lighting waits as the atmosphere stirs the thunder from the heavens.

The door creaked open slowly; I turned my gaze to see the shivering figure of none other than Harry Potter. Looking as small and as innocent as a two-year-old, his feet bare his eyes completely blank of their usual determination. Watching the other slumbering Slytherin's carefully I let a sinister smile travel across my face. I drew a finger to my lips to signal silence, and then I spread my arms, wide and welcoming. Beckoning my dear in, reaching out in all their failure. Almost cruelly they sucked him into my world, my father's world. The hard parts of his feet made soft thumping sounds as they raced quietly across the cold floor. Once his body lay curled in my arms, his head at my shoulder, sobbing, I gently slid my hands onto his back, and very gently traced my message:

"Love."