Learning to Trust

Chapter Four


Harry had been drinking for three days. He had broken it off with everyone, Ron included. He felt just as hollow and used as he did before. What was worse was that Hermione had yet to call or visit since she had told him off. Merlin, he thought, please…


There was a firm knocking on the door. He got up and swung the door open. Who he saw there shocked him. Lucius Malfoy stood there, looking at him with a sneer. He pushed past him into the house.


“We need to speak, Mr. Potter,” he told him. “But first things, first, you need to take sober up potion. It smells like you’ve been bathing in fire whiskey.”


“I don’t…”


Lucius grabbed him by his throat snarling, “You will take the potion, you will clean up, and you will listen to me.” He dropped him. “Do it, Mr. Potter, least I get Severus Snape here to do it for you.”


Scowling he left the room and went about doing what he had been ordered to. When he came back to the sitting room, he found Lucius at the window talking on a cellphone.


“Yes, imp, I will do that,” he whispered with clear affection in his voice. “I must go. We’ll see you soon.” He hung up the phone, pocketing it as he turned to look to the younger wizard. “Sober?”


“Yes, Mr. Malfoy, that I am. And now that I am, leave.”


“No, Mr. Potter, that isn’t going to happen,” he told him. “Come along. There is someone I need you to speak with.”


When they arrived at the grim looking house, Harry looked around the neighborhood. Lucius knocked at the door briskly, pulling the younger wizard over to the door with him. The door opened and Severus Snape was standing in the doorway.


“Come in,” he said, stepping out of the way.


They walked down a long hallway straight over to a sitting room. The dark wizard sat down in the corner of a long sofa.


“Mr. Potter, it would seem that Miss Granger is terrified for your very life as you are living it now,” Lucius said casually as he walked over to sit down on the other side of the very same sofa as his friend. “And when I say terrified, I mean, absolute terror that has her waking up and sobbing for hours afterwards.”


Harry swallowed thickly. “I…”


“Mr. Potter, the last thing I wish to hear is an excuse coming from you,” Snape told him. “I have heard her screams, her absolute panic that she will lose you thanks in part to your own disregard for your own life. And as much as I would love to say that I could ignore this behavior, I find myself becoming furious at the fact that I risked everything that I am just so that you may live.”


Severus stood up. “I’ll get us some tea.”


Once he left the room, Lucius said, “Hermione is scared for you, Mr. Potter. What do you feel about that?”


“Why is she so scared for me?” he asked in a low voice.


“She loves you. As it appears you are the only family she has left. Her parents, as you know, are dead. True, she still has the Weasley clan, but for her you are her family. The only one that matters and she cares for you even if you don’t.”


Harry’s eyes filled with tears.


Snape came back into the room with the tea tray in hand. He set it down on a small coffee table and pulled out his wand. “How would you care for your tea, Mr. Potter?”


“Light, one sugar,” he answered absently.


Severus handed him the tea and did the same for Lucius a moment later. They sat drinking the tea in silence for a few minutes before Snape asked him a very blunt question.


“So, Mr. Potter, why is it that you are trying to sleep with the whole of the wizarding world?”


“Why do you care? Do you want to fuck me too?” he shot back.


“Contrary to popular belief, I prefer women for fucking,” Snape told him. “Though there was a time just after your mother died that I was less than discriminate.”


“Meaning?” Harry asked.


“Meaning I slept with everyone I spoke with for more than five minutes,” he told the younger wizard. “I thought I could make the hollowness in my chest go away. That if I filled my dick into someone or was filled that I wouldn’t have lost the one person I loved more than myself. Lilly was the love of my life. I lost her far before that dreadful night. But it didn’t stop the pain, the anger, or the emptiness.”


“Did it work?” Harry asked, already knowing the answer on some level.


“Of course not,” he said, sounding angry. “Things like that never do. There will never be enough sex, potions, pills, liquor, or food out there in the world to fill that gaping hole in your soul, Mr. Potter.”


“How do you fix it?” he asked quietly.


“In some ways it never heals completely,” Snape whispered. “But time helps.”


***


Hermione walked into the sitting room, still feeling tired from the dreamless sleep that Lucius had given to her the night before. They had spent the night at Spinners’ End. She had told her nightmares to him despite not believing that they could be a premonition. But then she had gone to sleep and had the nightmare again.


She slipped into Lucius’s arms on the sofa, never seeing Harry watching her as she did so.


“What’s wrong with her?” he asked, kneeling in front of her. He combed her hair out of her face, seeing just how tired she was.


“I had to give her dreamless sleep,” Snape told him. “She’s sensitive to it. Miss Granger will be fine, but it will take a bit of time.”


Hermione’s eyes opened, blinking at Harry. She smiled slowly. Slipping from Lucius’s lap, she ended up hugging Harry.


“I love you, Harry,” she told him. “You’re my brother.”


Swallowing thickly, he said, “And you are my sister.” He kissed her temple. “I love you, Hermione.”


“Hmm, then you don’t hate me?”


“Never.”


She looked over to Lucius. “I can’t move.”


He took her from Harry, murmuring, “Back to bed with you, my imp.”


Harry watched as Lucius carried her away back to the guestroom. He looked over to Severus. “What now?”


“It depends, Mr. Potter.”


“On what?”


The former potions professor’s brow arched as he answered, “On you.”


***

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